





























Class . PZ> 1 
Book 1 M 
Copyright N 


COP^KIGIfT DEPOi 










* 






MEDICINE GOLD 




















THE FURIOUS PACE WAS SETTING EVERY ONE’S NERVES TINGLING WITH 

EXCITEMENT [Page 84] 





MEDICINE GOLD 


BY 

WARREN H MILLER 

II 

AUTHOR OF “THE RING-NECKED GRIZZLY,” "tHB 
BLACK PANTHER OF THE NAVAHO,” ETC. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK :: 1924 :: LONDON 







COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 


j 


Copyright, 1923, by The Sprague Publishing Company 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OJ AMERICA 

MAR 11’24 ; 

^ C/ ' 

©qiA7774D0 

'v\0 V 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Locket of St. Die . . . ... l 

II. The Thief. .,20 

III. Old Plow Handles. .,40 

IV. La Riviere du Nord.. 64 

V. The Way of the Naskapi ..... 92 

VI. The Fight at the Waterfall . . .116 

VII. Wamokwa, the White Bear .... 139 

VIII. The Warning. 166 

IX. Ladder Portage. 188 

X. Retribution.212 

XI. St. Cesare .. 238 









MEDICINE GOLD 

CHAPTER I 

THE LOCKET OF ST. DIE 

I T was with a grin of amused derision 
that Rob Colquitt viewed those three 
growing mounds of duffel on the dock at 
Roberval. The canoes in which they were to 
go were moored alongside the rude log float, 
while their guide, John Charley Nishimi-wog, 
bent over one of them, adjusting with the 
skill of the native canoeman the balance of 
four heavy side-opening duffel bags full of 
provisions against the solid immovability of a 
leather military trunk belonging to His Lord- 
ship. 

Dividing up the duffel, setting apart what 
has to be taken on a long trip into the wilder¬ 
ness from what is merely an essential in its 
owner’s private opinion, is the first real crisis 
1 


MEDICINE GOLD 


in any expedition. It laid bare the human na¬ 
ture of every person on it, Bob perceived as 
he watched, with a deal of covert amusement, 
the Trojans wrangling over those three duffel 
piles, as to what was and what was not going 
to be left behind. Each man of them was now 
fighting for the article of diet most dear to 
his own stomach, for the bit of camp gear that 
had become his personal fetish—the one thing 
he was sure he could not be happy without, 
while Bob checked off essentials unmoved by 
their howls of wrath and dismay. 

He loved the Trojans, every chum of them; 
loved their foibles, their boisterous humor, 
their devastating sarcasm, pointed as a fish¬ 
hook and delicate as a paddle butt; loved their 
unfailing cheerfulness by camp and trail. It 
was because he was the only silent one among 
them, Bob believed, that they had tacitly 
chosen him for their leader. He never said 
much, but his simple, “Yes,” or “No,” gener¬ 
ally decided things and ended all talk. 

But there was divertingly enough of that 
2 



THE LOCKET OF ST. DIE 


now: “I say, ye know!” His Lordship was 
beseeching as His Lordship’s extensive collec¬ 
tion of toilet articles was being fairly torn 
from His Lordship’s protesting fingers, “I 
must take these, boys—one cawn’t pig it, my 
word!” 

“Don’t be a frabjous ass, Lord Jim—every¬ 
thing’s got to go in just those three canoes!” 
expostulated Ajax, passing over His Lord¬ 
ship’s heavy manicure set to Diomed, who had 
charge of the pile that was to be left behind 
at Roberval. He looked to Bob, who nodded 
silent approval, and Diomed set aside a fas¬ 
cinating but heavy tent wall pocket full of 
soaps and bottles amid further howls from 
Lord Jim. Then Ajax, himself burst into 
yells of protest, for John Charley Nishimi- 
wog had turned from the canoes to set aside a 
five-gallon jug of maple sirup on the discard 
pile. 

“One was plainty,” pronounced the Indian 
guide with a shrug of finality, and went on 
packing the canoes. 


3 



MEDICINE GOLD 


Bob watched the bare essentials going 
aboard with growing apprehension. Check¬ 
ing them off so that nothing vital would be 
left behind, still these soaring piles of duffel 
that had to go kept on increasing. Every 
pound of it would have to be back-packed over 
the unknown trails and portaged around the 
roaring cataracts of northern Quebec. Lakes 
would have to be crossed where an inch too 
much loading meant a swamped canoe. The 
silent youth began to realize the seriousness of 
this trip and his need for hard and quiet think¬ 
ing before they should cut loose from civiliza¬ 
tion entirely. His Lordship, boyish himself 
and but little older than the rest of them, 
would play a hundred-to-one shot either way 
and win or lose with equal nonchalance—but 
to win in this wilderness of North Canada 
was Life and to lose was [Death. Of the 
Trojan Club, Ajax and Diomed were “husks,” 
glorying in their strength, rash and impetuous, 
with all the violence of headstrong natures. 
Ulysses, the crafty, could be depended on for 
4 



THE LOCKET OF ST. DIE 


schemes and expedients, but he was such a 
woolgatherer as to be sure to go mooning off 
and lose himself on the first blazed trail. Bob 
felt that he and his bosom chum, the slender 
and idealistic Patroclus, were the sole two 
who saw things in the larger realities of com¬ 
mon sense, who realized that such a thing as 
a death in the party through some rash 
foolishness would end the whole trip in gloom 
and failure. 

It was a great club, the Trojans. It had 
had its inception in the thrilling pages of 
Homer, when the boys had been struggling 
through their Iliads together. Mr. Clayton, 
the tutor of this group of South Carolina 
plantation boys, had made them see not only 
the superficial glories of the Siege of Troy 
but its deeper significance in the universal 
types of human nature which that story re¬ 
veals. It was with surprised delight then, 
that, right in their own gang, the Trojans 
found that they could pick out their own 
George Galt, “Fighter” Galt, for the im- 
5 




MEDICINE GOLD 


petuous and headstrong Diomed who was 
not afraid of Mars himself; their own Sam 
Armstrong, of Beaufort Plantation, as the 
huge and immovable Ajax; and Kenyon 
Adams, the lanky and freckled son of Kings¬ 
ton Plantation, a youth with shrewd, slanting 
black eyes and keen, foxlike face, for the 
crafty Ulysses. Then there was Bob’s bosom 
friend, Craig Boylston of Gadsden, slender, 
handsome, silver-tongued, who naturally took 
the name of Patroclus, beloved of all the 
Trojans. Finally there was Bob himself, 
Camp Boss, their leader, the peerless Achilles. 

The Trojans were a hunting, fishing, and 
exploring club. They went on long trips 
together during the holidays; they pooled 
their tents, canoes, grub and ammunition, 
and lent each other guns and tackle if any 
had need. When away from home on trips in 
the woods they called each other by the names 
of their Greek heroes, and they tried to live up 
to the ideals of those heroes, too—not a bad 
business for any youth to set before him! It 
6 



THE LOCKET OF ST. DIE 


was when on these camping trips that they 
dropped their own Christian names entirely, 
preferring the Greek ones or nicknames de¬ 
rived from them, and so we must call them 
throughout this story. Bob was the only one 
who still kept his own name—probably be¬ 
cause it had been found impossible to get a 
nickname out of “Achilles.” 

This present trip was at the invitation of 
His Lordship to go hunting and fishing with 
him in Quebec, for ouananiche and trout, 
for moose and caribou. The young English¬ 
man had been a globe-trotter and big-game 
hunter from his boyhood days. He had lived 
in many of the British colonial possessions, 
and before he was eighteen had been a civil 
administrator in the hills of Ceylon. 

Tall, slender, sunburned, now sporting a 
wisp of a mustache that the Trojans 
secretly envied, Lord Jim was a scion of the 
great house of the St. Die’s. In present-day 
England they are wholesale buyers of raw 
cotton, and it had been his visit to South 
7 



MEDICINE GOLD 


Carolina on business that had ended in their 
all taking this Quebec hunting trip together. 
The affair had had that casual suddenness of 
most of the Trojan Club trips—a proposal 
from Lord Jim, a hasty assemblage of rifles 
and duffel, a wire to John Charley at Roberval 
engaging him and his partner Etienne Bis- 
sette; then two days on the Rilleram and a day 
up from Quebec found them decanted at Rob¬ 
erval with all their duffel and John Charley 
awaiting them with many grins. 

John Charley Nishimi-wog finally looked up 
from the canoes with a grunt of approval. 
He had performed the miracle of loading 
them, somehow, and was now ready for more 
thrilling matters. Out of a pail of shiners 
he grabbed one lively and squirming victim 
and threaded him carefully on His Lord¬ 
ship’s hook. The act reminded the Trojans 
that thus far they had not given their own 
fishing tackle a thought and that the ouan- 
aniche were right here in Lake St. John wait¬ 
ing for them. A simultaneous rush was made 
8 



THE LOCKET OF ST. DIE 


for rod cases. As they were to learn the 
rudiments of North country woodcraft at the 
knee of John Charley Nishimi-wog—whose 
name Ulysses had declared must be some 
kind of a college football yell—they imitated 
him now as he tied a stout, three-foot gut 
leader on the end of His Lordship’s line, added 
a light sinker and then a No. 6 snelled hook 
with the shiner threaded on it, hooked through 
the gills and under the dorsal fin. Then, with 
rods dangling precariously overside and the 
Trojans seating themselves wobhily on their 
several war bags, the canoes set forth, leaving 
the bare and rude semi-civilization of Rober- 
val behind and paddling up the west shore of 
Lake St. John. 

“Alors, Messieurs, mak’ it hard de paddle!” 
said John Charley. “We mak’ dat lob-stick, 
for peek up my partner, Etienne Bissette, 
by’mby. v 

He pointed to where, far up the shore, land 
jutted out, on which grew a tall spruce, its 
branches fantastically lopped. It marked 
9 




MEDICINE GOLD 


the mouth of the Ouiatchousn River where 
their trip up to the headwaters of the Rocher 
River—the moose and caribou country, the 
land of the Montaignais Indians—would 
begin. 

As they approached the lob-stick, a long 
birchbark canoe shot out from the point. In 
it were two paddlers; the one who paddled 
stern, thickset and stodgy, clad in a gorgeous 
green and red striped shirt, with a gaudy blue 
silk sash around the thick waist of him; the 
other, slender and girlish in figure, who sat at 
bow. The latter wore a red checked Mack¬ 
inaw coat, a rakish hat of the same material, 
set off with a saucy cockade of red and white 
feathers, and the flap of it was pinned up 
jauntily. Girl or boy, they could not make 
out which. 

“My word!” frowned His Lordship, look¬ 
ing around at the others, “this was not in the 
agreement at all, ye know! Fawncy Etienne 
presuming to bring another person with¬ 
out saying anything to us about it! Can it 
10 



THE LOCKET OF ST. DIE 


be by any chawnce his wife, John Charley?” 

“No, heem waf was come dead long tam ago, 
M’sieu. I t’ink eet was hees boy, Antoine. 
For why, I know not.” 

The Trojans looked at the approaching 
canoe a bit hostilely. An extra person, in a 
party already made up, is a fearsome thing on 
a camping trip! Nowhere else, they knew, is 
the human soul so laid bare as in the woods; 
nowhere else can one uncongenial, selfish or 
crocliety spirit do so much to spoil the sport 
of a whole party. And—if it should be a girl! 
Their hearts sank—she would have to be the 
real thing to stand such a rough trip as this! 

Etienne’s canoe swept rapidly down to 
them: “Bo’ jou’, Bo’ jou, M’sieus!” the 
habitant grinned broadly, his gleaming teeth 
shining under a heavy black mustache. 

“Bo’ jou’, Etienne !—Bo jou, Antoine!” 
grunted John Charley Nishimi-wog, nodding 
to the small person in the bow. 

The Trojans breathed freer; at least it 
wasn’t a girl, for their Indian had called him 
11 



MEDICINE GOLD 


“Antoine.” They eyed the approaching 
canoe, comparing Etienne and Nishimi-wog. 
Wild looking as the French-Canadian was, 
there were subtle differences proclaiming the 
still more abysmal savagery of their Mon- 
taignais Indian guide, Nishimi-wog. Etienne 
wore a disreputable old slouch hat; Nishimi- 
wog was hatless, a regrettable halo of coarse 
black hair done into a sort of porcupine effect 
being merely tied in by a dirty bandanna about 
his forehead. Etienne was resplendent in that 
shouting striped shirt; Nishimi-wog went him 
one better with a scarlet stag blouse which 
made a violent dot of color on the blue and 
green of the landscape. 

The Trojans looked curiously at the habi¬ 
tant boy, Antoine, in the bow. His was a wild 
and woodwise little face, a wilderness faun, 
with innumerable freckles on a piquant nose. 

Slanting black eyes that reminded them 
somehow of those of the Canada lynx. The 
beauty and girlishness of his appearance, Bob 
noted, was due to the perfect cupid’s-bow of 
12 



THE LOCKET OF ST. DIE 


a mouth and Antoine’s rather delicate French 
nose. But there was a lot to be learned from 
this wood-faun of a boy, they decided—also 
they meant to like him, unless he should turn 
out impossible. Antoine, they next perceived, 
wore a large gold locket pendant on his chest. 
Girlish, at first blush, thought the Trojans 
with a sniff of disdain; but no, for it was cus¬ 
tomary for the habitants to lavish extrava¬ 
gance in ornament and dress on their children 
and this Etienne was evidently no exception 
with his Antoine. 

Etienne introduced him: “Mah boy, An¬ 
toine, M’sieus!” he announced as the youth 
nodded shyly. Then, explanatorily to His 
Lordship: “Moos be dat I take heem ’long to 
St. Cesare wid me! Injun-man was try steal 
dat Nagushwa again las’ night. Heem come 
dead. Mooch troub’—Nagushwa, he keel dat 
Injun.” 

His Lordship and the Trojans could make 
nothing of that, but John Charley grunted 
excitedly: “Nagushwa!—Keel mans?—De 
13 



MEDICINE GOLD 


Montaignais was stole heem ’gain?—Hein?— 
Who was come dead?” he asked. 

“Dat Montaignais buck, Tawbisnay—you 
know heem?” replied Etienne. 

The Trojans looked at Nishimi-wog ques- 
tioningly. John Charley raised his finger and 
pointed to the large gold locket pendant on 
young Antoine’s chest. “Nagushwa—Medi¬ 
cine Gold, Lord Jeem,” he pronounced. 
“Ugh! Mooch beeg mysterrie! Keel Mon¬ 
taignais when heem was stole of it!” 

“Fawncy!” ejaculated His Lordship, as¬ 
tonished, “no end of a gewgaw, what!” 

The two canoes were close alongside now, 
and he reached over and examined the locket 
curiously. On it the Trojans saw faintly en¬ 
graved the letters, “St. Die.” It was now 
His Lordship’s turn to become amazed. “I 
say, y’know!” he exclaimed. “My own initials! 
—Odd, that—isn’t it?” he asked them all. 
“But there were Canadian St. Die’s here in 
Roberval’s time—that I know!’- 

“Dat hoi’ locket, heem was called de Locket 
14 * 



THE LOCKET OF ST. DIE 


of St. Die,” volunteered Etienne. “An’ dat’s 
your name too, M’sieu?— Hein ? Cur’ous, 
dat was! Dat all I know ’bout dis Nagushwa, 
M’sieu. De Injuns was all tam try to stole 
heem, and dey was all come dead of it. 
Heem was be long tam in ma familee. Ma 
modder, he was wear heem; ma grosmaman— 
all de Bissettes.” 

“You don’t tell me,” ejaculated His Lord- 
ship. “St. Die’s my name, you know—James 
Neville St. Die. Fawncy still finding a bit 
of jewelry here in these backwoods that is 
called after our name. Is it very old, 
Etienne?” 

“Ver’ old, two, t’ree hondred year, mebbe,” 
said the habitant guide. “De Cure at St. 
Cesare, he was tol’ you all ’bout dat Nagushwa. 
He know! We take heem back dere, now. 
Injun was try steal heem too mooch. Mon- 
taignais, Naskapi, all want heem. One buck 
was coom into ma house in St. Prime las’ 
week. We find heem nex’ mornin’, dead—an’ 
dat Nagushwa in hees hand of it.” 

15 



MEDICINE GOLD 


“Most extraordinary!—How, dead?” asked 
His Lordship interestedly. 

“Show de M’sieu, Antoine,” ordered Eti¬ 
enne. 

The boy pressed the catch of the cover of 
the locket and held it up for them to see. In¬ 
side was a rounded inner cover of polished 
gold, with a small knob to one side. En¬ 
graved on it in fine letters in old French 
script: "Qui mfouvert mount!” A. M. D. G. 
—“He who opens me dies!” read his Lord- 
ship translating for the benefit of the others. 
“My word!—” He began to fumble curi¬ 
ously at the small knob, but Antoine snatched 
the locket away. 

“Ah, non, M’sieu! No touch!—It is 
death!” 

“Nonsense, my dear boy!” began His Lord- 
ship, incredulously, seeking to recover the 
locket again and go on experimenting, but 
Etienne interposed. 

Sucre! Non, Lord Jeem;” he protested, 
“de Injun, heem was no can read, so he all 
16 




THE LOCKET OF ST. DIE 


come dead when he try open dat locket. Me, 
I’ll mooch ’fred of heem! I geev heem back 
to de Cure at St. Cesare dis trip.” 

John Charley Nishimi-wog grunted sud¬ 
denly, an eager sound as if he too had some¬ 
thing to contribute: “Nagushwa, heem beeg 
Medicine for de Montaignais lands, ol’ chief- 
man say.” 

Bob turned to him with interest at that 
news. The Silent One had been listening and 
thinking while the others were speculating 
idly about this locket. It had seemed to him 
that Antoine and his locket introduced a good 
deal more into their trip beside the mere taking 
him along to St. Cesare as a helper to his 
father. But John Charley had contributed 
the motive for these curious thefts by both 
Montaignais and Naskapi—land, possession 
of their hunting grounds. It had been guar¬ 
anteed them, once for all, by Frontenac’s deed, 
all Canada knew that; but who knew what 
might have been done during the earlier times 
of Roberval, when gentlemen adventurers 
17 



MEDICINE GOLD 


came to New France and were given lands 
right and left? This old locket held a mys¬ 
tery which the Indians knew but the whites 
did not, that was evident. But it was also 
protected from being opened by that sinister 
legend. No habitant dared try it; the words 
and the Jesuit signature were enough for them. 
The unlettered Bed Man received no warn¬ 
ing from that inscription but tried to open the 
locket by its knob. Result, death, immediate 
and instantaneous. 

A fascinating mystery, Bob reflected. So 
long as the boy Antoine was with them, their 
party would be mixed up in it unavoidably. 
Well, so be it! This wood-wise habitant boy 
would be decidedly an addition to their party, 
he felt, and, if there were further develop¬ 
ments with the Indians because of the locket, 
their numbers would be a vast help to Etienne, 
the father. Bob’s nature revolted at the idea 
of turning them both away because of An¬ 
toine, who was not in the agreement, and pro¬ 
ceeded to speak his mind. 

18 



THE LOCKET OF ST. DIE 


“I move we take Antoine with us, Lord 
Jim/’ he said. “If the queer jewel is really 
a danger to him he can count on us. How 
about it, boys?” 

“Quite all right,” said Lord Jim hastily. 
“I’ve an interest in the thing myself, rather! 
There Was a French St. Hie, y’ see. We’ll 
have to see it through for them, shawn’t we?” 
he laughed genially. 

The Trojans agreed with yelps of tumul¬ 
tuous approval. What had promised to be 
just a fish-and-game trip now had a tight little 
mystery all its own, and if there was a fat row 
ahead in the Indian country to the north where 
they were going, so much the better! So 
Ulysses was now transferred, with a lot of the 
duffel, to Etienne’s big birchbark, and then 
the whole fleet drove in their paddles for a dis¬ 
tant point up the lake with a tall spruce lob- 
stick standing sentinel on it and marking the 
first carry up the falls of the Ouiatchouan. 



CHAPTER II 


THE THIEF 


T HERE is an exhilaration in the utter 
freedom of the outdoors which is un¬ 
matched in its capacity to drive away 
care. In ten minutes from the time the 
canoes started on, the sinister Nagushwa and 
all it might bring of peril and danger was 
completely forgotten as the Trojans whooped 
and sang, racing each other with diabolical 
purpose to get one canoe forged sufficiently 
ahead of the other so as to let its bowman 
thrust the other canoe back with a shove of 
his paddle. In each, amidships, jutted out 
two rods, bowed in long and slender arcs, trol¬ 
ling for ouananiche, landlocked salmon, with 
the luckless shiners. The rest caroled as they 
drove in their paddles and hurled jocular abuse 
across at the neighboring canoes. 

20 


THE THIEF 


Then Lord Jim had a bite. Bob heard a 
fierce and excited exclamation from him and 
turned at bow to see his rod doubled up in a 
quivering bow while His Lordship thumbed 
the reel masterfully. Then, Zeeeeel That 
salmon was not to be denied! The reel 
screeched as he took out line; presently he 
broke water, a gleaming arc of silver, a glory 
of strength and beauty. 

“Topping! *Oh, topping!” burbled His 
Lordship. “Down with you, sir!” He 
dipped the rod tip strongly. The salmon dove 
to depths unknown while the taut line zipped 
through the water, throwing up a small spurt 
of white in its course. Again he broke; one, 
two, three prodigious leaps in a row, while the 
Trojans howled advice and encouragement. 

“Oh, rippin’!” gasped Lord Jim. “Just 
what I came for, Bob!” He snubbed the 
salmon sharply, putting him down for a tour 
around the canoe. The yells had suddenly 
shut off from Etienne’s canoe, and Bob saw 
Ulysses hooked into another one and fighting 
21 



MEDICINE GOLD 


him for his life. With two of the great land¬ 
locked beauties shooting off piscatorial fire¬ 
works at once, life was tolerably interesting 
around those four canoes! Bob felt that he 
could love this country as well as his own be¬ 
loved southland. The joy of it, he analyzed, 
lay in its entire freedom from the machinery 
of civilization. You had your home and your 
food with you; also your transportation; all 
the things one bought with money at home. 
Here one depended alone on muscle power 
and wits. Nature was right close, beautiful, 
bountiful, unspoiled, free with her gifts to 
those who knew, niggardly to the slothful and 
awkward. A man’s country, this! Aside 
from the staple cereals and roots, you needed 
but rod and rifle, plus skill, to live bountifully. 
Lord Jim, now: that was their dinner that 
he and Ulysses had on the ends of those slen¬ 
der lines. A spacious dinner, of juicy red 
meat that would be broiled over a fire of yellow 
birch coals, and, best of all, won from Nature 
by their own right hands. 

22 




THE THIEF 


“Now, M’sieu!” grunted John Charley, 
leaning far out with the landing net. Lord 
Jim guided the yard of gleaming silver down 
there in the water head first into the net. The 
Indian lifted him with a prodigious splash— 
a great ouananiche, full of fight as ever, out¬ 
witted by man’s skill and cunning. Yells 
went up from the other canoes; then more 
howls as Etienne, not to be outdone, nearly 
upset his birchbark in the effort to land 
Ulysses’ amateurly played fish. He squirmed 
out of the net amid derisive catcalls from Ajax 
and Diomed, who were both jealous, but 
Ulysses kept his head and played him back to 
the boat again. 

This time Etienne, helped by Antoine’s 
skillful paddle, netted the salmon handily and 
then there were eight pounds of fresh meat in 
camp and nine men to eat it! 

“Bah gosh, suli!” crowed Etienne, “when 
you eat heem you wish de whole worl’ was 
ouananiche an’ you in de middly of heem to 
eat you’ way out!” 


23 



MEDICINE GOLD 


John Charley grinned saturninely and drove 
his paddle in to lead the way to the Ouiatch- 
ouan portage. Its lob-sticked spruce was not 
a mile off now, a tall and pyramidal tree with 
half its branches cut off part way up, so as to 
mark it unmistakably from a distance. Por¬ 
tages, caches, trap-line heads and trail-gaps 
are all marked that way in the North. The 
lob-stick always means something important. 

They landed in the bay and immediately 
negotiated the portage. Up around the 
bridal veil of the falls of the Ouiatchouan a 
zigzag trail led up to the lumber dam at the 
head. The husks, Ajax and Diomed, simply 
perishing to show off their strength, loaded 
tons of duffel on their backs and then heaved 
the canoe up over their heads and started off, 
whooping like Piutes. There was a whole 
lot of steam to let off yet before the wilderness 
could tame them to its smooth, deadly quiet ! 
John Charley grinned sardonically and pro¬ 
ceeded to pile upon himself everything that 
His Lordship had thought of taking. 

24 



THE THIEF 


“Me no good. Old man! Was only carry 
t’ree hondred pounds now,” he informed Lord 
Jim. “When a yo’ng feller, tote six hon¬ 
dred!” 

“Really!” ejaculated His Lordship. “Well, 
Bob, pick up the boat and let’s get on with it!” 

They followed the mountain of duffel that 
was John Charley Nishimi-wog climbing up 
the trail. Behind them came Etienne and the 
long and picturesque birchbark; then the rest 
of the Trojans with their gleaming and var¬ 
nished wooden Peterboros. Up at the lumber 
dam, high above the lake now, they reloaded 
the canoes and started off up a still and placid 
backwater, avenued with straight and raggly 
black spruces, singing with the notes of the 
Canada white-throat and the veery thrush. 
The Ouiatchouan was a dear little river; 
beauty, solid beauty, every furlong of it! 
Spicy air, filled with the tang of spruce and 
balsam, sharp with the bracing exhilaration of 
the North, that made one feel resplendently 
alive. Presently the backwater ended in shal- 
25 



MEDICINE GOLD 


lows where they all got out and waded; then 
a baby waterfall where the canoes were hauled 
around through the brush. A hilarious crowd 
of voyageurs were the Trojans now, sarcastic 
and inconsiderate as ever, but all in good 
nature, in the joy of strong muscles well tried, 
the joy of hard, sweating work. 

Came another still reach, with worth-while 
scenery strung along both banks, and deer and 
moose splashing out of the lily pads at their 
approach. Then a lake forest of dead trees, 
after which the Ouiatchouan narrowed down 
to five feet, degenerated to a mere ditch, 
petered out into a rivulet, ran up a mossy cliff, 
and ended in a spring! 

“How long is the portage to Loon Lake, 
Etienne?” asked Bob, realizing that there was 
nothing much further to be said for the 
Ouiatchouan. 

“Oh, quite leetle walk. Mebbe t’ree mile— 
sure ’bout dat,” answered Nishimi-wog for 
him, for Etienne was hiding a face covered 
with reticent grins. 


26 



THE THIEF 


Alas for the Trojans! That “quite leetle 
walk” was the most diabolical of trails! It 
climbed up a mountain composed entirely of 
bowlders the size of a hencoop, a mile of it, 
a purple mile of red-faced, sweating energy, 
where you slipped on moss and cascaded down 
into fissures of hard granite with the canoe 
atop of your protesting frame; a diabolical 
mile on which perspiration and duffel alike 
were shed in assorted collections of canteens, 
coats, toilet articles, socks, towels, hairbrushes, 
landing nets and trout creels. The husks 
were done in. His Lordship, indomitable but 
by no means unbreathed, arrived at the top 
with his poor tousled head all streaks of wet 
hair and nothing to say but, “My word!” 
John Charley smiled like a gargoyle on the 
silent and spent Trojans at the summit, and 
he and Etienne and Antoine, who had the 
stamina of the North, went back to collect all 
that impedimenta without a comment save, 
“Dees was de best part of eet, M’sieus!” 

When they came back those salmon were 
27 



MEDICINE GOLD 


cooked and ravenously downed. Subdued but 
still fighting game, the Trojans pitched down 
into the swamp below that ridge. We draw 
the veil of charity over that swamp! Five 
muddy and torn and bedraggled voyageurs 
toiled their way out of it at last and hit the 
hard path downhill through the forest with 
huge sighs of relief. The steady thump, 
thump of moccasined feet now made the sole 
sound to break the silvery quiet of the wood¬ 
land, dripping with the soft warble of birds. 
The Trojans were dog-tired and longed for 
rest. A hundred paces, then rest sticks, stout 
saplings six feet long, were set up under the 
canoes while the bowman stood out from under 
and held the thing from toppling over while 
the stern man thankfully put down his end 
on the trail and mopped his forehead. 

Came a gleam of white waters down below 
through the trees. A feeble shout went up 
from all the Club. Loon Lake at last! Into 
a grassy landing spot the trail led, and every 
one threw himself down in a posture of 
28 



THE THIEF 


utter exhaustion. Half an hour of that, and 
Ulysses, the Brains, as they called him, sug¬ 
gested a swim. Howls of approval. Five 
naked humans disported themselves in the 
clear and cold waters while trout rose to dimple 
the mirror of the lake. 

That revived every one, and soon the busy 
hum of putting up tents, the stroke of axes in 
the forest, the clink of pails and cooking gear, 
made the spot home for them all. Diomed 
and Ajax got out their rifles and went with 
John Charley to watch a backwater for deer. 
Fatroclus, with his strong home-body instincts, 
busied himself in fixing up his and Bob’s tent 
so that it was the first of them all to look like 
a human habitation. Ulysses and Lord Jim 
jointed up their trout rods and shoved out on 
the lake in one of the canoes. 

Bob sat and dreamed. To him this was the 
cream of all the outdoors, just to sit and look 
out over a great wild expanse like this lake, 
the. home of innumerable wild creatures, the 
domain of the red Indian, Nature’s kingdom, 
29 



MEDICINE GOLD 


every rod of it replete with interest. Birds 
attracted the eye, and he identified the species, 
some of them old winter friends of his at home, 
now in their summer nesting places. The 
trees received his scrutiny—balsam, spruce, 
pine, larch; the ubiquitous white canoe birches, 
the curly yellow ones good for firewood, the 
quaking aspens. Each had a use in nature, 
not only for beast and bird but for man. 
How many secrets they all held! Who knew 
to what new uses man would put them as his 
knowledge of all that the good Lord has pro¬ 
vided increased from year to year! The 
boy Antoine, now: hardly a secret useful to 
the woodsman, in root, bark and twig, of all 
these trees that he did not know. Bob 
watched him curiously, while he helped his 
father at the culinary department. A product 
of the wilderness was Antoine, wise as a whole 
tree full of owls in the ways of life as it was 
lived here. And in this domain it was that 
knowledge that counted. A dollar was worth 
nothing here, unless it happened to be of silver 
30 



THE THIEF 


when it would make a poor but passable 
sinker! The locket of St. Die swung and 
gleamed on Antoine’s chest as he went noise¬ 
lessly and efficiently about his work. Another 
useless bauble in this man’s country! What 
was in it no man knew. Something of deviltry 
without a doubt, Bob guessed, for it came long 
ago from that bad old country of the Old 
World, where men had tamed and subdued 
Nature and in doing so had lost all that was 
most precious in their own souls. Bob was 
glad he was an American as he thought over 
that locket. We had the soul-healing wilder¬ 
ness with us yet, lots of it; and so long as it re¬ 
mained we would be the same idealistic nation, 
not quarrelsome, not burdened with the age- 
old wickedness that afflicted Europe and al¬ 
ways would afflict it. It seemed to Bob that 
the root of Europe’s trouble was overcrowd¬ 
ing. There were forests there, but they were 
trained forests, like cornfields, with all the 
trees planted in rows. No birds were in them 
that could possibly be killed and eaten. No 
31 




MEDICINE GOLD 


fish in the brooks, not even minnows and frogs, 
for the last of them had been seined out and 
eaten by men in their fierce struggle to keep 
alive. Europe had lost the best of its soul 
in that struggle, Bob felt. This Nagushwa 
was an echo of that struggle, a diabolical con¬ 
trivance of some Florentine jeweler’s art, 
probably; something that the de’ Medici might 
have had made for her. Inside it was an in¬ 
strument of injustice, as Bob conceived it, 
something that long ago had wronged the 
Indians who inhabited this country. Their 
traditions were older than our written records. 
They knew what it contained and to this day 
were risking their lives to get what was in it. 
It seemed preposterous to Bob that that gold 
bauble had killed a man only last week, only 
two days ago, to be precise; yet it was so. 
Etienne had not dared leave his son in St. 
Prime because of it. There was the practical 
story of Nagushwa. To the simple habitant 
the only safe place for it was in the vaults of 
the church of St. Cesare, where it had re- 
32 



THE THIEF 


mained for most of its history, as Etienne had 
told them. 

Bob could not see why Etienne’s sudden 
decision to take Antoine with him would help 
much. Word of their flight was sure to 
get back to the Indians by that subtle way 
news has of traveling through the forest. 
What was to prevent their being tracked and 
an attempt made to steal the locket while they 
were in camp? Why not this very night? 
They were not twenty-five miles from St. 
Prime, even back here in the heart of the 
wilderness. 

These reflections were broken by the song 
and shout of Ajax and Diomed coming back 
to camp. Deep-chested and masculine, their 
voices rang in an exulting marching song. 
Out of a glade into the level shafts of the set¬ 
ting sun they marched, a long pole between 
them over shoulders and a deer hanging on 
it with his four feet tied together by a thong. 
John Charley followed, carrying the rifles. 
Etienne and Antoine dropped their work and 
33 




MEDICINE GOLD 


ran to look over the deer, bubbling French, all 
excited. It was fresh meat to them, and buck¬ 
skin and deer sinew. They knew just what 
to do with every part of that deer. Bob 
helped put up a game pole and hang up their 
first meat. The two husks retired to their tent 
to talk it over, while Nishimi-wog started a 
roaring camp fire. Night fell, cold and sharp. 
Strings of trout joined the deer on the game 
pole as Ulysses and His Lordship returned, 
blessing the North and chanting volubly. A 
rousing feed; then every man to his tent, where 
in five minutes the rumbling snores of the 
dead-tired told of a good day’s work well done. 

All but Bob. The poet in him bade him 
sit out by the dying camp fire, watching the 
rosy fingers of the northern lights in the sky, 
the stars overhead, the moon coming up like 
a slow red fire in the east. A heavy sheepskin- 
lined canvas coat kept off the cold, so he could 
doze in comfort and smell the wood smoke 
from the fire. Slowly it burned down to dull 
red embers while silence brooded over all the 
34 



THE THIEF 


yast wilderness. This was the North, cold 
and cruel to those who did not know it, friendly 
and bounteous to its own children. To the 
southern boy, used to his vast cypress swamps, 
his great groves of long-leaf pine, his up¬ 
lands caressed by the balmy softness of the 
southern air, it was all new and fascinating. 
The Voice of the North was ringing out and 
echoing up the lake in the silvery Ha! Ha! Ha! 
— Ha! Ha! Ha! of the loons disporting them¬ 
selves in the moonlight. Bob lay awake, 
listening to their crazy laughter, trying to see 
one of the birds out in front of camp. Then 
a whitethroat woke up and sent his broken¬ 
hearted little refrain out into the night. Bob 
sat up, listening. Birds did not wake up 
unless disturbed by the pop of hemlock in the 
camp fire, and their fire was dead and dull. A 
call of a loon came from somewhere to his 
right, down the lake bank. It seemed muffled 
and not clear, not echoing, as it would if made 
out over water. A loon answered it; then 
another loon call sounded, muffled, to his left. 

35 



MEDICINE GOLD 


There was something human in that last call, 
something with not quite the wild tang of the 
real bird. Instantly Bob thought of Na- 
gushwa and the Indians. Were they out in 
the forest right now and about to attempt some 
stealthy invasion of their camp in the hope of 
getting possession of the locket? 

The loons out on the lake had ceased calling. 
That aroused the youth’s suspicions more than 
anything else. He knew that nothing quieted 
a night bird so effectually as to attempt to 
imitate his call. Often he had done it him¬ 
self, at home, with the great barred owl. No 
matter how perfectly he tried to make that 
hoot, the bird detected it instantly and stopped 
hooting himself. 

Bob got up and went out silently into the 
forest. A lean-to tarp on the other side of the 
fire covered the browse bed where John Char¬ 
ley and Etienne and Antoine lay rolled in 
red Hudson Bay blankets. The lithe slender 
form on the side toward him must be the 
habitant boy, he decided. 

36 



THE THIEF 


Concealed under the dark foliage of a young 
spruce, Bob waited a long time, listening and 
watching. It had grown suddenly silent, for 
the loons had stopped calling altogether. 
There was no imagination about this, then! 
A twig snapped, off to his left in the woods, 
and Bob turned his head cautiously. But 
there was not a further sound, nor the least 
motion among the shadows. 

Then—and even then he could hardly realize 
it—a silent figure stood beside the great pine 
tree trunk that rose back of the guides’ lean-to. 
The ghostly flickers of the Borealis played on 
the figure, now faintly visible, now lost in the 
deep gloom. 

Bob stood and watched, scarce breathing. 
The figure floated silently, step by step, out 
into the portage clearing, listening to the 
sounds of heavy breathing in the tents, search¬ 
ing with wary eyes the shadows under the 
lean-to. He was a young Indian buck, a 
village Indian, in a gray flannel shirt and dark 
homespun trousers, such as some habitant 
37 



MEDICINE GOLD 


might have worn, but the lank black hair that 
fell over his ears under his slouch hat betrayed 
him. He stooped noiselessly as Bob watched. 
Then his hand crept over Antoine’s blanket 
and disappeared under a fold of it. 

Bob leaped forward: “Here!” he called, 
sharply, and then sprang for the intruder. 
The buck leaped back, fending off Bob with 
his fist. The youth snatched for his wrists, 
an idea that the Indian might use his knife 
coming into his mind. But the young buck 
was far stronger than he was. With a quick 
twist he had broken Bob’s hold and was gone 
like a shadow into the forest. Bob yelled and 
started in pursuit. He heard the camp— 
some of it—waking up behind him as he 
crashed into the underbrush. It was all a 
tangle of thick tree trunks with dead branches 
and twigs snapping and jabbing him in the 
face as he pushed through. The Indian had 
vanished. A fearful windfall of tree trunks 
in a hugh tangle of branches had swallowed 
him, like a squirrel darting into a brush pile. 

88 




THE THIEF 


Bob gave up the pursuit and returned to 
camp. He found Etienne turning out sleep¬ 
ily, yawning and rubbing his eyes. 

“M’sieu Bob!—you awake!—Wat was be 
de matter, heinV’ he asked, surprisedly. 

“An Indian came into camp, Etienne—I 
think he was after Antoine’s locket.” 

“Sacre !—N agushwa!” growled Etienne, 
now wide awake. “Bah gosh, suh, I guess I 
was more better watch a leetle, me! You go 
to bed now, M’sieu.” 

Bob went back to his sleeping bag, mentally 
thanking the little whitethroat which had 
warned him. He was sleepy now. The night 
air and the vigil had been just what was needed 
to quiet his overtaxed body. 

“Well, anyway, I saved that buck his life— 
if there is anything in this story of Na- 
gushwa!” he muttered, as he adjusted the bag 
flaps over his shoulders. In a few minutes 
more he had let the whole affair rest on 
Etienne’s shoulders and joined the snorers in 
the forester tent house. 




CHAPTER III 


OLD PLOW-HANDLES 


T HE canoes were all out on the lake 
when Bob turned out of his sleeping 
bag next morning. It was broad day¬ 
light and the sun was rising over the hills to 
the east. Antoine was alone in camp, putter¬ 
ing around a log range made of the ruins of 
last night’s back-log fire. Appetizing odors 
of coffee and bacon came from his direction. 

“Ah—Monsieur Bob!—Thanks!—Thanks!” 
he cried out on catching sight of him. He 
rushed toward Bob his eyes sparkling with de¬ 
light and gratitude. “My fader, heem tol’ 
me all about it —Mon Dieu —dat Nagushwa!” 
he sighed, shaking his head. 

Bob slapped young Antoine’s shoulder 
heartily. “It was lucky that I just happened 
to be too tired to sleep! It shows, though, 
40 


OLD PLOW-HANDLES 


Antoine, that we’ll have to keep a guard 
around camp all the time. Does Lord Jim 
know?” 

“Oh, la la!” laughed Amtoine. “Does he! 
‘My word! Rippin’—simply rippin’,’ ” he 
mimicked the genial peer. “He was all for 
us starting on their trail tout de suite , but 
Nishimi-wog said, ‘Trout!—Lak dat,’ holding 
hees hand about three feet apart, and that 
turned him off. M’sieu Bob will have his 
breakfast?” he broke off to inquire. 

“Sure! You’ll teach me how to fly cast, 
Antoine?” asked Bob, “I’d like to know the 
rudiments before I go near a real trout.” 

“Glad to, M’sieu Bob!” said the boy 
brightly. He brought him coffee and bacon 
and a huge platter of flapjacks. Bob downed 
them and went for his rod case. Jointing 
up the long slender bamboo, he put on the 
reel and threaded its tapered line through the 
guides. Antoine showed him how to attach 
the leader and fly and then went out on the 
gaunt, bare bones of a huge balsam trunk that 
4>1 



MEDICINE GOLD 


was being used for a canoe landing, carrying 
the rod with him. 

“One first strip out line for de length of de 
rod, M’sieu Bob—so!” he explained. “And 
then casts, little mo’ each time—so! Now see, 
it get longer—twenty—thirty—forty feet— 
so! Now I pull up de rod and hold my wrist 
up straight—so; wait for de back cast to 
straighten out behind; den snap forward—so! 
Voildj la has!” 

He had driven the line forward and it 
snapped out like a whiplash. Before the fly 
dropped he released a yard of line held out 
by his left hand and it shot through the guides, 
adding to the cast. The leader tumbled out 
straight ahead of the end of the line and the 
flies cascaded over it and floated on the still 
waters. Bob watched critically. Antoine 
was about to repeat the lesson, when the trout 
of Loon Lake decided to continue it for Bob’s 
benefit, for suddenly there was a dark swirl, 
a flash of a yellow belly and a pink mouth, 
and the fly disappeared in a smash of foam. 

42 



OLD PLOW-HANDLES 


Antoine struck with a sharp twitch of his 
wrist: “Get you’ landing net, M’sieu!” he 
called, as the line went taut and began to 
gyrate in wide circles, ripping through the 
water in a small spout of white. Bob dashed 
to the tent for his net. While he was unfold¬ 
ing it and opening out its loop the savage little 
trout leaped clear—three or four leaps in a 
row—dove again and darted for the protection 
of the tree branches below. Antoine ran out 
on a branch and held the rod in a doubled arc 
that snubbed out against his rush. Bob yelled 
encouragement and made his way out on the 
trunk. The trout veered off in an incredibly 
swift rush and broke water twenty feet away. 
Then line was stripped in under Antoine’s 
forefinger as the trout was drawn, struggling 
viciously, toward them just under the surface. 
Bob made a scoop with the net, but the trout 
avoided it by leaping out of the water, splash¬ 
ing flying drops all over them. Again he 
circled, and again the swaying and dipping rod 
brought him in. 


43 



MEDICINE GOLD 


“Now, M’sieu!” gritted Antoine. 

Bob scooped again. He did not grasp just 
how .he had managed it, but the net came up 
with a gorgeous green and yellow and red- 
spotted little demon squirming in it. He 
grabbed the fish among the meshes and bore 
him quickly to land. 

“So!” laughed; Antoine, happily. “We’ll 
have him for more breakfast, M’sieu Bob.” 

Bob took the rod from him and started in 
himself on this new game. The trick was easy 
to learn, but the trout that rose to his Mon¬ 
treal and Brown Hackle were quick and wily. 
He finally landed a double, however, and came 
into camp rejoicing. 

“Spoils of war!” he grinned. “Fast and 
furious!—they’re right good little fighters, and 
smart as lightning, I’ll say!” 

“Dey eat good, too—you like our Canada 
trout, eh?” queried Antoine, offering him the 
first victim, browned. 

“Pie!” declared Bob after one mouthful. 

“Pie? Wat was dat?” Antoine shrugged 
44 



OLD PLOW-HANDLES 


his shoulders gayly; then he jumped up and 
clapped his hands boyishly. Etienne’s long 
birchbark was coming around the nearest 
point. His Lordship was holding up a trout 
a yard long and waving his hat like a maniac. 

“I say, Bob—topping!—what!” he called. 
“And we saw a moose! Bather! The 
blighter was bigger’n an elephant!” He bub¬ 
bled French and English in alternate streaks 
as Etienne swept the canoe ashore. His 
Lordship sizzled with enthusiasm; the trout 
were “rippin,” the scenery was “no end won¬ 
derful,” and—that moose! Words failed 
Lord Jim entirely! 

“Heem was be Ole Plow-Handles, I t’ink, 
yes, sure, mebbe!” grinned Etienne. “I mak 
de birchbark horn an’ we was call heem this 
evening.” 

“My dear old chap, take this Montreal and 
this Silver Doctor and go catch one of these 
gorgeous little demons—you really must!” 
urged His Lordship, pressing his own rod into 
Bob’s hands. 


4*5 



MEDICINE GOLD 


The boy pointed to his “double,” the trout 
lying side by side on a mossy bank, and then 
to his own rod, jointed up and lying against 
the tent. 

“Been taking lessons already,” he smiled. 
“How’s that for a beginner, eh?” 

“Jolly good!” barked His Lordship. “I’ve 
dreamed. Bob old thing, dreamed of such fish¬ 
ing as this! My word! We’ll have all we 
want of it!” 

Another canoe came grating in on the beach. 
Ajax and Diomed looked mysterious. They 
straggled up the beach carrying nonchalantly 
a string of two-pound trout, and the first of 
the Trojans they asked for was Ulysses. The 
husks would rather horse old Brains, as they 
called Ulysses, than eat. Bob knew of their 
little failing, and he winked at the others to 
keep quiet and let them work their works. 
Presently Ulysses swept in, driven by John 
Charley’s silent paddle. 

“Rotten fishing,” he remarked casually, 
dropping his creel on the beach. It looked 
46 



OLD PLOW-HANDLES 


suspiciously bulgy as to its cover. He opened 
it and began casting out trout after trout. 
Then he snapped the cover shut. “How did 
you fellows make out?” he asked his ancient 
rivals, these sons of Anak—Ajax and Diomed. 

“Tol’ble, son, tol’ble!” chirped Ajax dis¬ 
playing their catch. 

“Match you for high rod!” challenged 
Ulysses. 

“A stake! A stake, y’ know!” put in His 
Lordship, grinning gleefully. 

“High Rod goes with Lord Jim for the 
moose this evening,” suggested Bob. 

“All right,” agreed Ulysses and they 
measured the largest of their respective 
catches. 

“We win, Di!” roared Ajax. “Judgment, 
Lord Jim!” 

“Hold on—I forgot one!” said Ulysses 
craftily, opening his creel. Out of it he drew 
a long fellow, a beauty, all of four pounds. 
“He was in the net and out of the net until I 
thought I’d never land him!” declared Ulysses, 
47 



MEDICINE GOLD 


happily, holding him up for them all to ad¬ 
mire. “Do I win?” 

“Yes, you don’t!” yelled Ajax and Diomed, 
“we forgot one, too!” The pair of them 
spurted up sand as they stamped for their 
canoe where, chortling with glee, they began 
cutting something loose from the bottom grat¬ 
ing of their canoe. Then they hauled him over 
the gunwale. Ulysses’ eyes popped and His 
Lordship howled excited English ululations as 
that fish slipped over—more and more of him 
—and fell on the sand, yards of him, long as 
an oar, with a tail as wide as your hand! Green 
and gold and red, he was a prince, a five- 
pounder ! 

The husks started for Ulysses’ shirt tail to 
cut it off with a camp knife according to their 
ancient custom—but he beat them to the bush. 

“My word—where did you boys ever learn 
trout fishing?” barked His Lordship as he 
looked the High Rod fish over. 

“Didn’t,” said Diomed, succinctly. “We’re 
used to bass and pike. Ajax was trying to get 
48 




OLD PLOW-HANDLES 


his fly out of my ear, when I looked around 
and saw that my line had disappeared entirely. 
Ajax had a theory that we ought to let him 
swallow it clear down to his tail and then deftly 
pull him inside out—so we did that little 
thing.” 

They loafed around camp and discussed 
trout and that attempted theft of Nagushwa, 
for there was a lazy reaction from the fatigues 
of the Big Portage and no one felt energetic. 
Ajax skinned out his deer and bagged the 
meat in cheesecloth to keep out blow flies. 
Late in the afternoon His Lordship and Dio- 
med made ready the birch canoe to go with 
Etienne to the lily-pad cove where Old Plow- 
Handles had been seen. While they were 
gone, Bob, Ulysses and Patroclus were to be 
left at grouse shooting around camp, so as to 
be near Antoine in case the Montaignais should 
make another attempt to steal Nagushwa. 

The grouse safari started in while they were 
still at the evening meal. John Charley 
grunted suddenly and made the Indian bird 
49 



MEDICINE GOLD 


sign with flapping hands, pointing into the 
forest and glancing significantly at Patroclus, 
evidently considering him the weakest and 
therefore most effeminate of the party—the 
bird shooter. He did not know Pat! 

Patroclus left the table to pick up his .30 
Army and slip in a clip of armory shells. 

“Gee, fellows, there are two of them in that 
spruce! Sharpen up the camp ax and get 
the mulligan pot raidy!” he joked, treading 
gingerly off into the bush. 

The two grouse sat in the spruce craning 
their necks stupidly and calling Peent! Peent! 
Peent! with the inane tameness of barnyard 
fowl. Presently Pat stopped and raised his 
rifle. Whang! — Whang! went the short 
barks of his armory cartridges, with just a sec¬ 
ond in between to reload. A fluttering and 
drumming on the needles under the spruce 
told where they had dropped as he pushed for¬ 
ward to retrieve his game. At sight of that 
Ulysses and Bob searched hurriedly for their 
rifles and ammunition and melted into the for- 
50 



OLD PLOW-HANDLES 


est, for it would take six more grouse like 
those to make a proper mulligan. 

Then Etienne’s canoe set forth, gliding si¬ 
lently along the lake shore toward the cove at 
its upper end. Diomed paddled at bow, with 
his rifle handy, sticking up beside his knee. 
His Lordship squatted amidships, scanning the 
lake shore ahead eagerly. 

“No weegly ’bout!—No make leetly nowse!” 
whispered Etienne warningly. “Ah’ll ’fraid 
all tarn every minute you was speel all of it. 
Dis can-noe steady hoi’ boats if you’ll don’t 
jump an’ weegly all tarn.” 

Diomed and His Lordship turned them¬ 
selves to observant statues at that whispered 
caution of Etienne’s. The shores floated si¬ 
lently by, dented and fringed with bushy ever¬ 
greens, marked all around the lake by a brown 
belt that represented the level of the winter 
snows. Once His Lordship turned with a low 
“I say!” as they passed a cove with a deep 
backwater bog where two huge shaggy brown 
animals were feeding. 

51 




MEDICINE GOLD 


Etienne grinned reassuringly: “Dem was 
be cows,” he told the excited Englishman. 
“Bull moose, heem back in de hwoods. You 
was see oY Plow-Handles to-night, sure 
mebbe.” 

The sun was setting when the canoe finally 
beached on a small point which commanded 
two coves whose backwater bogs were set in 
the low green amphitheater of the Laurentian 
hills. Gaunt dead trees and an occasional 
bushy white spruce dotted the green floor of the 
bog. It was down through here that Old 
Plow-Handles would come. Diomed and His 
Lordship climbed up trees where they could 
watch each bog. Just as the sun had disap¬ 
peared over the rim of the western ridges 
Etienne raised his birchbark horn to his 
lips. 

A long, wavering, and querulous call rang 
out. Indescribably wild, it was a sound that 
no other creature in the world but a cow moose 
could make. It ended in a jerky, impatient 
grunt. The echoes of it rang and floated 
52 



OLD PLOW-HANDLES 


through the hills until lost in the far distances. 

Silence; while Diomed and His Lordship 
listened, scarce daring to breathe. Not a 
sound came in answer. The wee, piping call 
of a disconsolate Canada whitethroat rose 
from a bush down the shore. All the north- 
land brooded in inscrutable mystery. Min¬ 
utes passed on into the infinity of northern 
time. A quarter of an hour later Etienne 
raised his horn and again sent out the lonesome 
call of the cow. 

This time a faint reply came—but from far 
up in the hills on Diomed’s side. It might 
have been the bark of a dog. After a period 
of excited waiting, from a near-by ridge came 
the challenging, “Ou-ach!” of a bull moose— 
thrills shivered through the listening Diomed 
as he thumbed his rifle hammer and cautiously 
threw down the magazine lever to make sure 
that a bright, brass cartridge was in the cham¬ 
ber. Presently a hollow rattle on dry wood 
and an eager grunt came from much nearer up 
the bog. Rattling his antlers against the trees, 
53 



MEDICINE GOLD 


grunting as he came, the Lord of the North 
was hurrying to the tryst! 

Then there was a disconcerting silence. He 
was evidently stopping to investigate before 
coming nearer. Diomed tested the wind anx¬ 
iously with wetted forefinger. No; he could 
not get their scent, for it blew, what little there 
was, out toward the lake. 

Etienne put his horn close to the ground 
and gave out an enticing whine. Another 
grunt came, immediately, and then out through 
a thicket of spruce jutted cautiously an enor¬ 
mous, ungainly head, surmounted with great 
yellow antlers just recently out of the velvet. 
He was still at least three hundred yards off, 
Diomed judged. The bull shook his antlers 
and the long black bell under his shaggy neck 
wiggled. Cautiously, so as hardly to make a 
perceptible motion, Diomed let himself down 
out of his tree, grabbed up his rifle, and 
humped for the cover of a small bushy cedar 
where he could stand up and shoot. 

Etienne filled the horn with water and let it 
54 



OLD PLOW-HANDLES 


dribble into the lake. The bull grunted again. 
Scarcely had he done so when from the bog 
on His Lordship’s side there came a loud 
“Ouach! Onach!” stern, challenging, men¬ 
acing. It said, “Did any one here say 
F-I-G-H-T! Well, here I am!” 

“My word—Old Plow-Handles himself!” 
called out Plis Lordship in a low voice, and 
cautiously slipping down out of his tree, Dio- 
med looked to him for a signal when to shoot, 
for there were two moose now and both he and 
Lord Jim would have to fire together. 

Etienne’s wild black eyes gleamed. “Ah’ll 
show you some beeg moose fight, pooty soon, 
me!” he whispered hoarsely. “Wait!” 

Old Plow-Handles had evidently been tak¬ 
ing the approach of the other bull and had 
been coming himself, noiselessly determined to 
see about this! 

To tease him Etienne rattled his horn bel¬ 
ligerently against a log and then raised it to 
his lips and barked out a defiant “Ouach !— 
Ouachr derisive, insulting, arrogant, insolent. 

55 




MEDICINE GOLD 


Old Plow-Handles let out a squealing trum¬ 
pet of rage and burst from cover—to charge, 
head down, straight for them! 

“Shoot, everybody!—Shoot-!” squalled 

Etienne. Diomed braced himself, his rifle at 
shoulder. His own moose had come out again, 
perhaps a hundred yards nearer, and stood 
looking toward him, undecided whether to face 
Old Plow-Handles in a single combat or not. 
Diomed held the silver bead steady behind the 
shoulder and pulled trigger. His moose 
flinched, grunting fiercely. Then a scared 
yell from Etienne spun him around. Old 
Plow-Handles was now thundering down upon 
them, not seventy yards off. His Lordship 
stood out like a rock, holding his English ex¬ 
press rifle steady on him. They saw an im¬ 
mense spread of massive pointed palms that 
protected the bull’s shoulders; a bony head 
with crinkled nose, split by red snarling lips 
over savage teeth that yearned for their lives 
as the great bull came on like a ton of incar¬ 
nate hate and rage. 


56 




OLD PLOW-HANDLES 


Would His Lordship never fire! Sixty, 
fifty, forty yards the distance lessened. The 
young Englishman was used to standing his 
ground before tiger, lion and elephant, no 
doubt, but Diomed felt like swarming up the 
nearest tree and Etienne was already leaping 
for cover. Di raised his rifle and covered 
the charging moose, ashamed not to stand and 
back His Lordship. Then the express rifle bel¬ 
lowed. Diomed saw Lord Jim’s shoulder 
kick back a foot under the recoil, as a cloud of 
smoke obliterated Plow-Handles in a white 
mist. Bang! went the rifle a second time, and 
Old Plow-Handles went down on his nose, 
his long legs doubled under him. 

‘‘Scuppered him, my word! Rather!” ejac¬ 
ulated His Lordship, coolly. 

He slipped in two fresh shells and they all 
went forward. After walking completely 
around the noble prize, they had all stopped 
in front of him and were admiring the spread 
of his massive antlers when suddenly Old 
Plow-Handles raised his head and looked at 
57 



MEDICINE GOLD 


them. Diomed had often seen deer do this, 
in their last struggles, and thought that it was 
a final effort. 

“Peeg! Chicken!—Ol’ dev!” taunted Eti¬ 
enne. “You was feel pooty seek, heinV* 

It was like touching off a bomb! The great 
moose leaped to his feet and in that leap he had 
come directly in front of them, not three feet 
away. His antlers were lowered at His Lord- 
ship and on the instant he charged. There 
was no time to so much as cock the rifle. Lord 
Jim prodded the brute in the nose with the rifle 
muzzle, but the impact of it knocked the 
weapon out of his hands. Undaunted, he 
grabbed for the long tines lowered at him and 
hung on. Plow-Handles tossed his head and 
the man rose, floundered a frantic instant in 
the huge pans, and was pitched headlong, the 
sharp tines ripping His Lordship’s riding 
breeches from knee to thigh. He landed head 
and shoulders in the bog and Plow-Handles 
made after him with a trumpet of ragd Then 
Diomed came to life and fired into his 
58 



OLD PLOW-HANDLES 


shoulder as he passed a few feet away. 
That changed his mind, right off! Plow- 
Handles swung around facing Di, his head 
swaying from side to side, his left foreleg use¬ 
less and tottering under him. His eyes spoke 
murder, but before he had time to move Di 
shot him again, full in the chest. He tottered, 
his forelegs gave way beneath him and the 
vast weight of him crashed to earth—to stay. 

Diomed looked around with an exultant 
whoop, throwing back his head in a laugh that 
cracked the skies. Just what the reaction is 
that makes the human animal do that in his 
moment of triumph no one has yet fathomed. 
We see it in savages; doubtless our own cave¬ 
men ancestors did it when victorious over cave 
bear and lion. 

“All over—come out, men!” yelled Di, 
finally finding his voice. No one answered 
him. Etienne had grabbed up His Lordship 
and dragged him to comparative safety under 
the branches of a down tree. Then his head 
popped up over the trunk. 

59 



MEDICINE GOLD 


“Lord Jeem, he was come dead, I dunno,” 
he said as Di ran over anxiously; “Good boy, 
M’sieu Di! Me, I was grab hees gun; den 
Ah , ll drap eet an’ yoomp for heem. Diable! 
One poke from dat moose, hees hoofs of it, an’ 
Lord Jeem was be keel entirely!” 

Lord Jim’s eyes opened at that moment: 
“ ’Pon my word, ye know!” he muttered feebly, 
“Poisonous swine, that moose—rather!” 

They helped him to his feet. At once he 
staggered over to examine the foe, and pres¬ 
ently it was all explained. His bullet, fired 
when Old Plow-Handles was charging, had 
crashed through one of the immense ridge ver¬ 
tebras of his neck and had temporarily stunned 
the great spinal nerve. Otherwise he was 
practically unharmed and could have done a 
vast amount of execution and gone away un¬ 
hurt. 

“My word, young Galt, but I owe you some¬ 
thing for that bit—what!” smiled Lord Jim, 
gripping Diomed’s hand strongly. “And 
really I’d like to meet the rotter who said 
60 



OLD PLOW-HANDLES 


there is no dangerous big game in America— 
Y 2 L-ther!” 

“Seems like I lost a moose, too, hyarabouts,” 
exclaimed Diomed happily. “Let’s go look 
for him!” 

They went over to find Diomed’s moose. 
He was stone dead in his tracks. The power¬ 
ful .35 had struck back of his shoulder and 
stopped within him. He must have stood 
stock-still and fallen slowly over when Di had 
turned away at Etienne’s yell. 

“Dat settle eet; two moose, de meat, de 
hides, de horns of it—we was move de camp 
over here,” declared Etienne, as Di and His 
Lordship were examining Diomed’s antlers. 
It was a smaller head than Old Plow-Handles, 
but the pans were wide, with a spread of about 
forty-seven inches, and the tines were long. 
Altogether a massive and impressive trophy 
for the Galt Plantation manor hall down 
South, thought Diomed, as he gloated over his 
prize proudly. As to Old Plow-Handles, His 
Lordship had measured him already—a trifle 
61 



MEDICINE GOLD 


under sixty inches spread and the tines so long 
and thick that they had given him his name 
“Plow-Handles.” Sportsmen for years had 
tried to call him, or even to get a sight of him 
without success, Etienne told them. 

“Dat odder bull, heem was be it dat bring 
out dis ol’ dev,” he declared. “Me call heem, 
wan, two, t’ree years—but no can do. Heem 
was wise guy, de sports say.” 

“Fawncy!” ejaculated His Lordship. “No 
end of a swine—what! But I’m rawther a 
lucky devil, ye know. Got Mrs. Four-Claws, 
a Bengal tiger that our mess up in Nepal had 
given up as hopeless. I hadn’t any young chap 
to stand by with an extra barrel, though!” he 
exclaimed, looking appreciatively at Diomed. 
“She’d killed my only gun-bearer, ye know.” 

Diomed grinned. The praise of one brave 
man for another felt good, but he had no words 
for reply. 

Etienne fixed up both trophies for the night 
by tying bandannas to the antlers. Flapping 
about in the night breeze, they would serve to 
62 



OLD PLOW-HANDLES 


keep away small prowlers. The party was 
heading toward the canoe when the guide sud¬ 
denly stopped on the shore and looked out over 
the dim bosom of the lake, peering intently. 

“Hein ?—Canoe was come!” he announced 
in low tones. 

Whoever was in it was in a direful hurry, 
for they could hear the rapid stroke of pad¬ 
dles long before the canoe itself was visible to 
any eyes but Etienne’s. It turned out to be 
Bob and Patroclus and Nishimi-wog, in the 
eighteen-foot guide’s model. They ran her 
ashore, full tilt, a short distance away, and 
Bob beckoned to His Lordship to come over, 
his meaningful glances urging haste. 

“Lord Jim—the boy Antoine’s been kid¬ 
naped—kidnaped by the Montaignais, we 
think!” he announced in low tones. “We’re 
starting two parties after them right off— 
who’s going to break the news to Etienne?” 
he asked, in almost a whisper, glancing over 
at the unconscious guide with the deepest sym¬ 
pathy in his eyes. 



CHAPTER IV 


A' 


LA RIVIERE DU NORD 

NTOINE kidnaped! By the Mon- 
taignais! F awncy!” 

His Lordship gave a low whis¬ 
tle of surprise. Then his face grew stern. It 
seemed, as Bob watched, that he could almost 
see His Lordship turn at the news from the 
light-hearted, careless sportsman to the stern, 
just, law-enforcing young English ruler. 

“The infernal cheek of these Indians, 
though !” exploded Lord Jim. “They’ll soon 
find that they cannot pull our leg like that any¬ 
where in His Majesty’s dominions!” Once 
again he had become the British civil adminis¬ 
trator in a land of savages. Kipling had made 
Bob well acquainted with the breed; the lone 
and usually youthful Englishman, capable, 
fearless, just; daring to go alone into a strong- 
64 


LA RIVIERE DU NORD 


hold of Malay tribesmen or into a camp of 
fanatical red men with equal indifference, and 
to compel obedience by the sheer might of the 
Empire behind him and the justice of his 
words. 

He stalked over to where Etienne still 
waited, fussing incuriously with the canoe. 
Before he had got three words out, the French- 
Canadian was in transports of emotion. 

“Antoine tooken!— Oh—sacre tonnerre! 
Oh, mon pauvre petit gar$on!” he howled. 
“Curse dat Nagushwa! I keel! I keel! Wat 
we do?—Wat we do, M’sieus?” he shrieked. 

Terror, rage, utter incapacity to think or 
plan possessed the emotional habitant . He 
looked to his white men for relief and guidance 
as would a wounded dog. 

“Steady, now, Etienne—it’s all right!” put 
in Bob. “Here’s what we do—it’s all planned, 
and they are not an hour ahead of us—you and 
Di are to go right over in the birchbark and fol¬ 
low on their direct trail. Lord Jim, Pat and 
I and Nishimi-wog are to try to head them 
65 



MEDICINE GOLD 


off with the guide’s model by going down a 
river called La Riviere du Nord. Nishimi- 
wog thinks that they have taken Antoine to a 
village of the Naskapi forty miles north. He 
followed them along the moose trail around 
the lake until it came out on the old Naskapi 
Fur Trail. There he found a white feather, 
dropped from Antoine’s hat, and his boot- 
prints were pointing north. The moccasins, 
too, are Naskapi, Nishimi-wog says. He’s 
going with us, as he speaks their dialect-” 

Etienne did not wait further than to learn 
the main outlines—who was to go and where. 
He rushed for his canoe, breathing hoarsely. 

“Coom, M’sieu Di!” he begged, holding the 
gunwale, mad to be off. Diomed leaped in, 
and at once the birchbark shot out, while the 
rapid sculling of Etienne’s paddle at stern kept 
even the rugged Diomed paddling hard to keep 
her bow on course. 

“Poor devil!” murmured His Lordship, as 
their canoe swept out into the gloom. “Father 
and son! Think of his feelings as a parent, 
66 




LA RIVIERE DU NORD 

boys! None of us feel that, or can half ap¬ 
preciate it. And now, Bob, just how did you 
manage to let them kidnap the boy, with you 
all in camp?” he asked, sardonically. 

“We weren’t,” protested Bob, earnestly. 
“Pat and I and Nishimi-wog were out fish¬ 
ing, and Ulysses and Ajax were in camp, or 
near it, grouse shooting. They weren’t a bit 
far off, for they heard a single shriek from the 
boy, but that was all. They both rushed back 
to camp to find him gone. None of us 
dreamed, you know, that they’d take him —it 
was this Nagushwa that they were after, we 
all thought.” 

“The blighters!” ejaculated His Lordship. 
“‘Now, why did they not take the locket? 
That would be only a theft, but kidnaping’s 
a crime, in these Dominions.” 

“Ulysses has an idea that they were afraid 
to open it themselves, so they are going to take 
him somewhere and force him to open it—the 
poor kid!” said Patroclus, his voice quivering 
with the intense sympathy of his nature. 

67 



MEDICINE GOLD 


“Why, it will kill him, too, if the inscription 
on the cover means anything, you see.” 

Lord Jim whistled. “That’s so—by Jove! 
The blighters! But we’ll have a word to say 
about that, I fawncy! What else, Bob?” 

“We came paddling in at the call, and John 
Charley, here, at once began tracking them. 
There is quite a party; Naskapi, the kinsman 
of the Montaignais, and a few of the latter. 
They went north along the Naskapi Fur Trail, 
he found out. He told me about this Riviere 
du Nord—it flows into the Chamouchouan. 
We can beat them to the Naskapi village by 
running it. So I organized both parties, with 
Di to lead one of them, and you the other, sir. 
We ought to start right away. Good thing 
there is a moon. We can make the carry by 
moonlight and push on down the river early 
to-morrow.” 

“Good! I say, have you provisions and 
blankets, y’ know?” 

“Yes, sir, they are in the guide’s model. I 
brought it because it is the lightest and larg- 
68 



LA RIVIERE DU NORD 


est, except Etienne’s birchbark, which is too 
heavy. With each man wearing his ruck¬ 
sack, we can swing the canoe over all our heads 
and make as fast time as walking, over the por¬ 
tages.” 

“Good head, Bob!” smiled Lord Jim. 
“Well, let’s get on with it!” 

They piled in and Nishimi-wog shoved off 
from the point. The canoe carried their party 
of four—the three lightest and Nishimi-wog 
—with just freeboard enough for a few days’ 
rations and their blankets and rifles. 

“I say, Nishimi-wog, have you ever run this 
Riviere du Nord?” asked Lord Jim, as the 
canoe started across the cove headed for the 
northwestern corner of the lake. 

“No, M’sieu,” grunted John Charley, 
stolidly. “Mooch bad watair, me know; plenty 
portage. Me find um,” he added confidently. 

None of the rest of the party realized the 
importance of finding those portage trails on 
an unknown river. A blaze on a tree, a shelv¬ 
ing rock, a mere dirt crevice between two huge 
69 




MEDICINE GOLD 


pines might be all that marked them. Pass¬ 
ing one inadvertently meant, perhaps, getting 
into deadly rapids. But as they were all ten- 
derfeet in sporty waters, none of them attached 
much importance to the river ahead of them. 
Like all rivers, it could be and had been run, 
no doubt, so they scarce gave it a thought. 

“Who are these Naskapi, John?” asked Bob, 
as the canoe swept silently on through the 
gloom. 

“Shhh! No talk loud! Injun got big ear!” 
cautioned Nishimi-wog in low tones. “Nas¬ 
kapi de Nenenot, dey call demselves, dey was 
cousins of us Montaignais. Mooch wild; 
sauvage. Me no see um, till come winter, 
when dey bring furs. Dey come down de 
fur trail to de Chamouchouan. Long tobog¬ 
gan. Dog team—lak Eskimo. Snowshoe. 
We was go to dat co’ntree now.” 

They paddled on in utter silence, now, for 
a faint black line ahead told them that they 
were nearing the north cove. Then, through 
the gloom, the opposite hills loomed up and 
70 



LA RIVIERE DU NORD 


the black shadow of a wall of trees reached 
out over the still water. Two tall gaunt dead 
pines appeared at the head of the little bay 
at the northern end of the lake and here would 
begin the portage over the La Riviere du Nord. 

“Hst! No make leetly nowse!—Leesten!” 
whispered Nishimi-wog as the paddles fell 
silent and the canoe floated like a ghost on the 
black surface of the little bay. Only the In¬ 
dian’s paddle moved, soundlessly, without once 
leaving the water. They could hear the slight 
gurgle of waters around its blade and see 
stumps and down trees floating slowly past. 
Everybody was listening and watching the 
forest, hardly daring to breathe, for it was 
quite likely that the portage was watched. 

John Charley grunted softly and stepped 
out on a down tree, motioning Bob to hold the 
canoe fast. Noiselessly he vanished across 
the fallen timber of the backwater. For a 
long time there was not a sound. Then a few 
whitethroats woke up and started their wee 
song, but not a swish of a branch nor a crack 
71 



MEDICINE GOLD 


of a twig broke the stillness. A sudden 
thwack of a beaver’s tail and the splash of 
some muskrat diving were the only sounds 
that told them the Indian was moving, scout¬ 
ing through the timber along shore. 

Then came a low whistle from the depths of 
the forest gloom ahead. The canoe glided 
onward and presently ran into a narrow 
stumpy channel. 

“Awright! Coom. Dere was nobody here 
—sure ’bout dat!” came Nishimi-wog’s hoarse 
whisper. 

A muddy trail scour greeted them as the 
canoe ran ashore. It was a trail seldom used, 
except in the fur season, but it was well enough 
cleared to start along without waiting for the 
moon. Each man strapped his pack on his 
shoulders and the canoe was swung up over 
the heads of all four of them. Stepping to¬ 
gether, they felt their way up through the 
silent woods, the branches of hemlock and 
birch swishing along the upturned bottom of 
the canoe. 


72 



LA RIVIERE DU NORD 


They were in the barren ground highlands 
when the moon came up, red and enormous, 
over the black points of spruce spires to the 
east. The trail wound over and through the 
low hills, great bowlders all about, shining 
white in the silvery moonlight. Splashing 
through bogs, scrambling up rocky declivities, 
it led them, mile after mile. The canoe sat 
light on four shoulders; the five miles of the 
trail went by as fast as one could walk. But, 
as might be expected, they were totally unpre¬ 
pared for what is really meant by the voy- 
ageur’s term, “sporty water.” 

A dull boom and roar sounded ahead as the 
trail once more plunged into dense forest. It 
became louder and more menacing with every 
step forward. The trail dipped down. 
Densely wooded hills rose up opposite, and 
in the bottom of that ravine was this unseeing 
Thing, hungry and growling, its voice mut¬ 
tering thunder. 

Then they suddenly came out on the banks 
of La Riviere du Nord, tossing the canoe 
73 



MEDICINE GOLD 


aside, shouting at each other and pointing, 
shaking their heads and talking—but no one 
could hear what was said in the presence of 
that mighty uproar. White and black in the 
moonlight, the tempestuous river thundered 
past, its tossing mane foaming, hoods of its 
spray spouting up over sinister black rocks. 
It was a fearful and wonderful thing to look 
at! One huge wave, like a foam-crested surf 
billow thrown lengthwise of the river, fascin¬ 
ated them with its unchanging power and fe¬ 
rocity. Forever holding its place, it leaped 
and foamed in one continuous roar of untram¬ 
meled freedom. Behind it a boiling rabble 
of waters lashed and eddied through a comb 
of granite teeth. Back of that was the oppo¬ 
site bank, sheer walls of scoured granite that 
rose up from white and troubled depths. 

Bob felt that never before had he realized 
the insolent freedom, the vigor, the complete 
unrestrained savagery of Nature as now. 
Here was one of her very own rivers, old as 
Nature herself, older than record, older than 
74 * 



LA RIVIERE DU NORD 


all the races of man, which for countless ages 
had leaped and thundered down this granite- 
bound cleft, had slain innumerable living 
things in its day with the callous cruelty of 
the mighty, and had never known an instant’s 
restraint, a moment’s check, or a second’s 
curbing. 

Sporty water, indeed! How much would 
all their lives be worth in ten seconds’ grip of 
this rushing monster tossing its white mane 
restlessly to and fro! Bob leaned over and 
shouted in Nishimi-wog’s ear: “Don’t you 
know anything about this river, John?” he 
screeched. 

The Indian shook his head and pointed 
silently to the beginnings of a trail down the 
river bank. Others had used it, and the port¬ 
ages around the rapids would be easy to find, 
he seemed to mean. 

Bob thought that it would be all right —if 
they didn’t inadvertently pass any portage 
landings! 

At a sign from His Lordship they all picked 
75 



MEDICINE GOLD 


up the canoe again and started on. The trail 
wound along close to the rapids at first, then 
ascended a hill and skirted along through the 
timber for some time, while the mutter of 
troubled waters came ceaselessly up from the 
ravine. Then it pitched down abruptly, to 
come out on a high bluff, with still and silent 
pools below them. 

“Simply toppin’, this—what!” grinned His 
Lordship as they sat down and looked the 
place over as a spot in which to stop and get 
in some sleep. 

“I’ll say so, sir! It’s going to be some 
trip!” came back Bob. 

He and Nishimi-wog set to work lashing 
the canoe on its side to two tree trunks and 
then spread a light tarp up from its upper 
gunwale to two poles which Patroclus had 
cut. Guying these out, they had a shelter that 
would sleep the four in a row. The packs 
were stowed along the lower side of the canoe 
and the blankets and sleeping bags rolled out. 
In five minutes the whole party was dead 
76 



LA RIVIERE DU NORD 


asleep, with the dog-tiredness of the utterly 
weary. 

Early next morning a hurried breakfast 
was urged along and the party reembarked. 
For several miles the river was a still back¬ 
water, with dense spires of black spruce and 
naked dead trees crowding down into the 
stream on both banks. The hills were in¬ 
visible behind the dark green barrier. A bull 
moose stepped hastily and silently ashore at 
the head of a reach. Then came a bend and 
the waters began to move more swiftly. There 
was current again; birch and hemlock clasping 
friendly hands overhead, great brown bowlders 
swimming like giant turtles under the keel, 
the occasional V of a snag jutting up in the 
placid current. Bob kept watching the banks, 
looking for the blaze of a portage landing, 
for there was a chattering of waters on ahead 
and a white mist rose through the trees. 

Nishimi-wog cocked his head and listened. 
Then his face turned back to them, his eyes 
smoldering like a leopard’s. 

77 



MEDICINE GOLD 


“Leetly rapeed—we was roon heem sure!” 
he grinned, as the water quickened beneath 
their keel. Almost immediately the stream 
narrowed and white water began to show, 
eddies and wavelets made by the increasing 
current. A gap in the spruces opened up, and 
then, with a sudden giddy plunge down a swift 
and deep chute, they were in the rapids. The 
roar burst on them like whisking aside a cur¬ 
tain. Great shaggy bowlders, spruce-clad 
and moss-grown, jutted out into the stream, 
and in between them the river flung its whole 
force like a lunging snake. The canoe swung 
wildly broadside to; John Charley, paddling 
like a demon, spurned her from the teeth of 
a rock and Bob felt his paddle spring as his 
arms bent it doggedly and forced the stern out. 
They shot at once into a white rabble of foam¬ 
ing waters. To Bob the canoe seemed hardly 
moving at all; it was only when he glanced 
at the shores rushing backward that he grasped 
their terrific speed. His Lordship was yell¬ 
ing like a Comanche, paddling furiously. 

78 



LA RIVIERE DU NORD 


Bob wanted to get up and yell, too, at the 
top of his lungs, but John Charley’s arms 
reaching far out and grabbing enormous pad¬ 
dlefuls of water kept him equally busy swing¬ 
ing the stern clear as rock after rock swept by. 

Then they shouted in unison, for a huge 
down tree came to view directly across their 
path. There was no stopping the canoe, no 
avoiding it! Its under side seemed hardly to 
clear the water. There was a foot, maybe two 
feet, under it, but every one fell flat back as 
for a breathless instant she jammed her bows 
under it, hung a second and then scraped 
through while the waters backed up astern 
came boiling over the gunwale. 

“Oop! Paddle queek!” screamed Nishimi- 
wog, rising, to paw frantically at the mad 
waters. Bob leaped to his seat and drove in 
his paddle to the breaking point. The canoe 
was swinging broadside to the current and a 
big gnashing rock that cleft the current in 
twain seemed rushing upstream to meet them. 
By a hair she was straightened in time, graz- 
79 




MEDICINE GOLD 


ing the rock with a jar that set every one’s 
teeth on edge. 

John Charley now began to develop symp¬ 
toms of extreme perturbation. He clawed on 
all sides of the canoe and shouted back some¬ 
thing over his shoulder that no one could hear. 
Bob thought he wanted to cross the rapids to 
the other side, but his utmost efforts did not 
seem to move the canoe an inch that way. 
Then John Charley could stand it not a 
second longer: “Paddle, left side—paddle!” 
he screeched. Bob shifted and the canoe shot 
over. Once in the maw of the current on 
that side it swept downstream like a swal¬ 
low, hurdled a sunken log like dipping over 
the surf—and darted for the brink of a water¬ 
fall ahead! 

A simultaneous yell burst from His Lord- 
ship and Patroclus. You could have knocked 
their eyes nicely off their cheeks with a stick. 
A neat and irrevocable plunge and a sousing 
that would be cold and wet seemed imminent. 
But, just as the bow of the canoe jutted out 
80 



LA RIVIERE DU NORD 


into space, John Charley gave its bow a mighty 
flip off to the left and the canoe whirled, and, 
instead of diving, smacked the water below 
with an even keel and slid and raced off into a 
still backwater again. 

“My word! Glorious! Simply topping!” 
gurgled His Lordship ecstatically. “I move 
we shoot all of them hereafter—shawn’t we?” 

Nishimi-wog’s eyes beamed like a child’s, 
for the white man’s praise felt good. Only 
Bob’s hard and drawn face said “No!” The 
rest were ready to shoot all rapids —any rapids 
—any time, now! 

“Great sport, sir—if we only knew some¬ 
thing about what we were getting into be¬ 
forehand,” he demurred. “Certainly is fun, 
though.” 

“De portage was all be mark,” said John 
Charley, confidently. “If no blaze—can shoot 
um.” 

The canoe floated on for several miles 
placidly down the backwater. It seemed too 
good to last, and they caught themselves won- 
81 




MEDICINE GOLD 


dering what new prank this unknown river 
was going to play on them next. 

But it meandered on and on through a fairy¬ 
land, the sun, now high up in the heavens, 
making wavering blotches of bright reflections 
on the silent green waters. The dip, flip, of 
the paddles kept up, with only the occasional 
grunt of John Charley Nishimi-wog at bow 
warning of some jutting rock or sunken tree. 
Then imperceptibly the river quickened its 
pace again. It now purred merrily, and they 
all watched the shores anxiously for signs of 
the next portage. A low whisper was stealing 
back to them from the walls of a high-walled 
ravine ahead, and a deep sound, seemingly 
coming up through the earth all around, smote 
their ears. John Charley listened, his face 
tense and hard as he dipped his paddle cau¬ 
tiously, but no portage blaze came in sight. 

But it was rank treachery, that whisper! 
For suddenly the river whisked them around 
a bend and shot them into a rocky gorge with a 
long reach of angry water ahead. Before their 
82 



LA RIVIERE DU NORD 


questioning eyes, a host of granite blocks, show¬ 
ered with spray, poked their sharp noses out of 
the river which boiled and leaped around them. 

“Great! Sporty water!” whooped His 
Lordship. “Let’s run them, John!” 

“I guess, mebbe so—sure ’bout dat!” said 
the Indian, reluctantly, for that deep under¬ 
tone was still in his ears. “I was see no 
portage landing. All right—moos be!” 

Right or wrong, the river was giving them 
little choice now! They became aware of an 
instant acceleration of pace as it gripped the 
canoe. John Charley stabbed at rocks in 
their path and Bob swung the stern to right 
and left as big and little bowlders whirled by. 
They were traveling at a headlong pace, now, 
and the canoe reeled and wallowed up to her 
gunwales in foam. Bob felt that they had 
gotten into something the length and extent 
and difficulties of which they knew nothing, 
but there was no leisure to think of that. He 
was wholly occupied in keeping steerage 
way on the canoe. His Lordship plied his 
83 



MEDICINE GOLD 

own paddle and was aiding their headlong 
flight, now driving it in on this side, now on 
the other. Huge gnashing black rocks, sud¬ 
den and giddy chutes, bowlders ahead which 
cleft the navigable water in two equally im¬ 
possible halves had to be met and dealt with 
all in a breath. John Charley’s paddle flew 
at bow. His shoulders worked with demoni¬ 
acal fury as he dragged the canoe bodily over 
to clean water or shoved off a threatening 
rock edge. Bob used his utmost strength to 
swing the stern clear. The battling waters 
broke over the bows, the uproar of the rapids 
drowned every other sound, and steadily the 
walls of the gorge closed in on them. There 
was no escape now! 

“Shoot her or bust!” whooped His Lord- 
ship, in most un-English slang. The furious 
pace was setting every one’s nerves tingling 
with excitement; each new danger averted 
or overcome filled them with an intoxication 
of delight, but their yells could not be heard 
above the turmoil of the shouting river. 




LA RIVIERE DU NORD 


And then the end came—came with the 
jarring crash of the canoe upon a huge shelv¬ 
ing granite ledge that nearly crossed the roar¬ 
ing stream! There was a terrific cauldron of 
waters boiling around the left end, but John 
Charley, with a sudden glance ahead, a sudden 
flip of his paddle, had deliberately wrecked 
them on that fearful thing! 

Three yells of protest went up, to be in¬ 
stantly stifled as His Lordship, Bob and 
P&troclus were thrown headlong out of the 
canoe and leaped up to help the Indian drag 
her out of the grip of the gnashing torrent. 
For explanation John Charley was pointing 
downstream over the top of the ledge, and 
gibbering strange Montaignais oaths. 

Bob scrambled up and looked over—and 
his heart stood still in his body. For below 
was revealed the appalling fate which had 
awaited them all! Beyond the rock a sharp 
line of white foam stretched, and beyond that 
—nothing! Nothing but the blue distances of 
a lower gorge. The whole river was tumbling 
85 



MEDICINE GOLD 


down in a shaggy white cascade forty feet 
high, to split in misty boiling clouds of vapor 
on jagged rock pinnacles that formed here a 
wide ledge. Up from it rose clouds of mist, 
and below that they could hear the thunder 
of the lower falls; while far down was the black 
lower pool, streaked with white foam, sullen 
with boiling eddies. 

Death was written there for any living thing 
that should get sucked into the maw of that 
last chute that whirled around their ledge! 
A single moment of hesitation on the Indian’s 
part, and matchwood would have been made 
of the canoe—and them—on those pinnacles 
down below! 

His Lordship, after one gasping look, 
turned and gripped John Charley’s hand 
strongly. 

“My word, ye know! There isn’t anything 
a fellow can say at a time like this—is there?” 
he cried, wringing the red man’s hand. 

A yell from Bob and Patroclu* interrupted 
them both: “Look, sir! Look! We’re ma- 
86 




LA RIVIERE DU NORD 


rooned!” Bob was shouting and pointing 
over to the right end of their rock. On that 
side a smooth and shining gap of current swept 
by—hut oh, how fast! It raced for its own 
ledge of the falls; it was far too wide to bridge 
by a canoe. 

For a time they all stared at it, unable to 
think. It was not pleasant to have a bare 
rock for a home, for who could tell what period 
of time! About the only thing of which a fire 
could be made was the canoe itself. Water 
was plentiful—too plentiful—but how about 
something to eat? The idea struck them all 
simultaneously. They were wondering about 
that new problem, with nothing cheerful to 
recommend it, when a sullen increasing mut¬ 
ter of the deep tones of the falls caused them 
to look around inquiringly. Then John Char¬ 
ley pointed overhead to huge castles of black 
and tinted clouds rising up over the trees to 
the south, and there was abject fear written 
on his face. 

“Thunder Bird, him come! Now we was 
87 



MEDICINE GOLD 


die!” he croaked, pointing at the clouds with 
a horny finger that shook. The craven fear 
in his eyes was not reassuring to see. The 
whites could not realize that a thunderstorm 
is so unusual up in the far North at this season 
as to be as much a cause for omens and por¬ 
tents to the Indian mind as an eclipse in other 
parts of the world, but Nishimi-wog’s fear of 
it was sickening. The Indian had reverted to 
his old pagan gods. He was utterly useless 
to them now, for abject superstitious fear had 
rendered him as helpless as a mouse. 

“Well,” said Patroclus suddenly, “there’s 
only one thing to do and I’m going to try it!” 
he declared, straightening himself with that 
light of high resolution in his eyes that Bob 
had come to know—and fear. Once Patro¬ 
clus got started on anything he imagined was 
his duty, he was hard to stop, Bob knew, from 
former experiences with him down at Spanish 
Flats. 

“I’ll get in the canoe, see,” said the slender 
idealist, “and you all give me one good shove 
88 



LA RIVIERE DU NORD 

—the biggest shove you can—and I’ll make 
that other bank—or go over the falls.” 

Bob leaped at him in protest: “Indeed 
you won’t, old pal, not on your life!” he 
growled roughly yet tenderly. 

“Sure I will! Nothing to it! Once over, 
I can throw back the tracking line and we’ll 
all get over. Let me go, Bob. I’m the light¬ 
est and can make it if any one can—” 

His Lordship planted himself between 
Patroclus and the canoe. He cocked both 
barrels of his express rifle as he grinned down 
at him quizzically. 

“I say you won’t, youngster! Not a hope! 
no one takes any such risks for this crowd. 
Man, it’d be your death—really, now, ye 
know!” There was an air of finality about 
the young Englishman that would have 
daunted a less sacrificial heart than Patro¬ 
clus’, but the boy was equally stubborn. 

“Please, sir. It’s the only way—” he had 
begun, when a sudden peal of thunder boomed 
and cracked in the sky, adding its din to the 
89 




MEDICINE GOLD 


ceaseless roar of the falls. Nishimi-wog 
groveled on the rock, making strange noises 
like a beast. Bob looked around anxiously. 
In his present mood Patroclus was sure to 
make a dash for the canoe and attempt the 
crossing unaided the first chance he got. The 
thunderclap gave Bob’s practical mind an idea 
to work to. He kicked Nishimi-wog unsym¬ 
pathetically in the ribs: “Get up, instantly, 
John Charley,” he barked, “and help me turn 
over the canoe—it’s going to rain presently,” 
he said in matter-of-fact tones. 

“Pray do,” grinned His Lordship, “while 
I watch this young fire-eater here.” 

They were struggling with the weight of 
the long, heavy craft, burdened as it was with 
their duffel, when Bob suddenly dropped it 
and ducked low under the crest of the rock 
himself. 

“Down everybody!—Down!” he shouted, 
motioning to them vigorously. 

Both His Lordship and Patroclus obeyed 
wonderingly. Bob beckoned for them to come 
90 





LA RIVIERE DU NORD 


over to his side. Cautiously they raised their 
heads and peered over the edge of the rock. 
Down, far below the distant foot of the lower 
falls, a file of little forked human beings was 
coming out of the forest and forming in a sort 
of group on the pebbly shingle of the pool of 
the lower falls. John Charley raised his head 
and looked also. For once he had forgotten 
the Thunder Bird. 

“Ugh!—Naskapi!” he grunted, his keen 
eyesight searching the party below. “And, 
dere’s Antoine !—an M’sieu J Lyss! —Ugh!— 
Mooch bad!” 

They all lowered their heads and looked at 
each other amazedly. 

“My eye!” ejaculated His Lordship. 
“We’ve headed ’em off—but how in the world 
are we going to do anything practical about 
it?” Then he looked down at the long-range 
express rifle in his hands thoughtfully. “I 
should venture the opinion, boys, don’t ye 
know, that the Lord has delivered the heathen 
into our hands, this day rather!” he grinned. 




CHAPTER V 


THE WAY OF THE NASKAPI 


W HEN their canoe arrived back in 
camp Diomed hastily collected 
provisions and blankets and 
packed his rack-sack for their overland trip. 
Etienne was useless to him now, sobbing and 
blubbering and so wrought up over the kidnap¬ 
ing of Antoine as to have lost his wits tempo¬ 
rarily, for he kept urging them to start off 
with nothing but his rifle over his shoulder. 
Ulysses and Ajax were already packed and 
waiting for them. 

“Hike, boys! Hep! Dogtrot!” ordered 
Diomed, taking command when the packs 
were slung up and the whole party had signi¬ 
fied their readiness to go. “We can’t wait 
for the moon. Etienne, you lead, until we 
get out where a fellow can see.” 

92 


THE WAY OF THE NASKAPI 


With rifles carried at a trail the four started 
along the moose track in a steady, rhythmical 
trot-trot-trot. The game track was well worn 
but narrow, and it went over little gulches 
and ravines which were but a stride for a 
moose to cross but called for careful jumping 
and a cessation of speed for them. 

It was under a pale early moon that they 
at length came to the end of the moose track 
and stood in that long narrow trench through 
the spruces, the old Naskapi Fur Trail. Long 
ago it had been cleared, just wide enough to 
pass a dog team and a toboggan. High up 
on a dead tree they made out a deep ax blaze, 
cut there when men walked on snowshoes 
fifteen feet above the present level of the trail. 
The trail bottom was grown up with small 
birch bushes and young spruce. It was seldom 
traveled in the summer. 

“Hi, fellows! Here’s where they set the 
boy down!” cried out Ulysses, stooping over a 
sharp heel mark in the duff. 

“Ah! Mon pauvre petit!” groaned Eti- 
93 




MEDICINE GOLD 


enne. Here was where Nishimi-wog was peek 
up de w’ite fedder— Allons, Messieus!” 

Antoine’s small hunting boots had left a 
well-printed spoor, noticeable on every patch 
of clear duff. He had been running; no 
doubt being dragged along by the wrist, for 
his toe-prints were deep and had thrown up 
ridges of needles. For a mile they jogged on; 
then even the husks slowed down. It was a 
terrible pace, in that rough and boggy trail, 
even with light twenty-pound packs. 

“I move we rest five minutes and get 
our wind,” growled Ajax, halting suddenly. 
They all stopped at once. Packs were cast 
off, foreheads mopped. 

“Let’s do a little figuring, now,” said Ulys¬ 
ses. “The Indians had two hours’ start, about. 
That means at least eight miles. They are 
moving fast, as Antoine’s tracks show. Do 
you think they will stop at all to-night, 
Etienne?” 

Etienne shook his head lugubriously. True 
to his Latin character, when anything affected 
94 



THE WAY OF THE NASKAPI 


his emotions all his world was upside down. 
He needed the cheerful optimism of the 
Anglo-Saxon to brace him up. 

“Dey no stop. Injun roon all day; roon 
all night; moos be,” he groaned. 

“But how about Antoine? The boy could 
not keep up any such pace,” objected Ulysses. 

“Dey carry heem. You was see,” grunted 
Etienne despondently. 

“On with the long-distance event then, 
men!” roared Ajax, springing to his feet. 

Again the steady jog trot made their rapid 
footfalls sound as one. The moon flooded the 
winding reaches of the Naskapi Fur Trail 
with silvery light. For the most part the lane 
kept to wooded valleys, but they were con¬ 
scious of high white granite ridges passing 
them, seen through vistas in the timber. Per¬ 
haps two miles further Etienne stopped with 
a grunt of discovery. 

“Hein? Dey was cut poles here,” he an¬ 
nounced. 

Short leafy branches strewed the trail and 
95 



MEDICINE GOLD 


in the forest two white cut stumps showed 
where birch poles had been hacked down. 
Their tops lay thrown carelessly in the bush. 

“Humph! Not taking any trouble to 
conceal their traces!” ejaculated Ulysses. 
“They’re depending on speed. How far is it 
to the Naskapi village, Etienne?” 

“ ’Bout forty mile, mebbe—yes, sure ’bout 
dat,” replied the French-Canadian with some¬ 
thing like his former ruggedness. “Dey was 
no keel ma boy till dey done get to dose vil¬ 
lage,” he averred, confidently. “Lord Jim, he 
was head dem off, mebbe.” 

“Sure he will!” agreed Diomed, cordially. 
“And then we’ll have ’em between two fires. 
C’mon, boys!” 

He led the party along at a heavy trot. 
The trail soon began to rise, climbing up long 
slopes strewn with glacial bowlders in the 
moonlight. Then woods appeared in a valley 
again and the road dipped, to skirt the shores 
of a lonely little lake dropped here into the 
lap of the Laurentians. 

90 




THE WAY OF THE NASKAPI 


“We was oop in the Height of Land, now,” 
said Etienne. “Dees pond was be called Wa- 
mokwa Lake.” 

“Why Wamokwa? Who named it?” de¬ 
manded Ulysses, as they all paused to look 
at it curiously. 

It was a weird and utterly wild little sheet 
of water. Across from them the opposite wall 
rose sheer in a grand cliff of red granite. Ice 
action had split the living rock asunder here, 
in some forgotten period, and the pieces of 
that great rock avalanche had fallen into the 
lake and now formed little islands on which 
grew small spruces. But the flat red wall 
rose for three hundred feet, a great barrier to 
the north, crowned with stunted pines and 
cedars. 

Etienne crossed himself superstitiously. “I 
was ’fred be here myself,” he confessed, un- 
blushingly. “Injun ghosts was leev here. 
You nevvaire hear of Wamokwa, de W’ite 
Medicine Bear of de Naskapi?” 

“Does he live here too?” grinned Ajax, in- 
97 



MEDICINE GOLD 


credulous amusement written broadly on his 
unemotional face. 

“Heem was white!” declared Etienne im¬ 
pressively, as if that oddity were enough to 
endow the creature with supernatural powers. 

“What? Polar bear, so far south as this?” 
objected Ulysses. 

“No polar bear. Heem was white black 
bear. Me, Ah’ll seen de track of it. He 
leev here,” shivered Etienne, lowering his 
voice superstitiously. 

The boys guffawed. “But it may be true,” 
put in Diomed. “I’ve read somewhere of al¬ 
bino black bears having been seen—on the 
Flathead in Montana, it was! It is a great 
species for freak coloration, you know.” 

“De Naskapi t’ink heem was hwoods god. 
When dey see dat Medicine Bear eet is sign 
of war,” said Etienne, reverently. 

Truly their habitant guide was more than 
half wild! His Jesuit piety had not pre¬ 
vented him from imbibing beliefs in the red 
gods of his Indian neighbors too! 

98 




THE WAY OF THE NASKAPI 


“War is right—if we ever get a sight of 
him!” retorted Diomed thumbing his rifle ham¬ 
mer. “Gee, what a trophy! Well, let’s on, 
fellows.” 

He rose, stifling a groan of weariness, and 
pushed on. The trail led them into a sort of 
dark tunnel through a swampy tangle on the 
lake shore, filled with fallen and molding trees, 
with immense hemlock trunks towering up 
into the night. Then it began to climb the 
rocky banks of the west slopes of the lake 
shore. A moonlight glade came, where some 
big wind-thrown tree had cleared an opening 
in the timber. 

“Wait a minute, fellows!” called out Ulys¬ 
ses’ voice, hastily. “By George!—there are 
no more footprints on the trail!” 

They stopped and searched the needly bot¬ 
tom of the trail carefully. It was virgin, not 
traveled for some months. No bent blade of 
grass, no disturbed stone, no print in the earth 
could be discovered. Antoine had been made 
to walk at intervals, but now there was no sign 
99 



MEDICINE GOLD 


of his boot heel. The party of Naskapi had 
vanished! 

Diomed sat down abruptly, his weary body 
crying out in protest. When a fellow had 
been paddling and hunting all day and then 
had run half the night through a bumpy and 
uneven wilderness trail, it was time to call a 
halt somewhere! His nature was the kind 
that brooks no check. To push it through 
and finish it in one whack was his ideal. He 
had been secretly hoping that they would 
catch up with these Naskapi, and his biceps 
ached for the free-for-all scrap that would 
ensue if he were permitted to have his way! 
This sudden ending of everything in nothing¬ 
ness rather took the wind out of his sails. He 
threw himself back, tired out, and let the 
others decide what next. 

Ajax and Ulysses were still fresh. They 
had rested all day in camp, and a problem 
like this was just the sort of thing that Ulys¬ 
ses’ keen mind delighted in. 

“It’s either an ambush or a scheme to get 
100 



THE WAY OF THE NASKAPI 


off the trail and rest,” he declared. “They 
must be just as tired as we are.” 

“Let ’em amb!” yawned Diomed, sleepily. 
“We’ll stay right here for their party. I 
wish they’d come!” 

Ajax grinned and sat down beside him, fin¬ 
gering his rifle hammer lovingly. The two 
husks would have liked nothing better than 
an ambush to be sprung, any old ambush and 
plenty of it! They would sit right there and 
shoot; it could not turn out better for them! 

“Well, you two hold the fort,” smiled 
Ulysses down at them, “Etienne and I will 
do a little ambushing of our own.” 

They set off back down the trail. It was 
not long before Ulysses stopped and pointed 
out a slender birch growing under the big tim¬ 
ber between the trail and the shore of the pond. 
The thing looked unnaturally bent. A few 
steps into the bush brought them to its 
trunk. 

“Here’s how they got away, Etienne; see 
the marks of climbing on the white powdery 
101 



MEDICINE GOLD 


bark? They bent it over the trail and were 
lifted over here, one by one.” 

“Ball gosh, dat was so!” grunted the guide. 
“Here was ma boy’s foots —mon Dieu!” 

He pointed down to a print of Antoine’s 
heel in the duff. From there they traced the 
tracks to the lake shore. Wading along and 
scanning each possible landing place care¬ 
fully, they soon came around the lake to a 
ledge at the base of the great red wall. 

“They can't have climbed this wall, you 
know,” whispered Ulysses, “but here’s where 
they went up the hill, I’ll bet! Look for a 
track in behind these bushes.” 

Parting them, the whole ruse became plain. 
Once climbing the hill, the Naskapi had given 
no further thought to concealment. Up and 
up over the high shoulder they had gone, leav¬ 
ing prints in the soil, dislodged stones, bent 
bushes. High above the lake in the white 
moonlight Ulysses and Etienne climbed after 
them. Up on the plateau the tracks disap¬ 
peared immediately. Ordinary walking in 
102 



THE WAY OF THE NASKAPI 


that dry duff would leave no print. They 
cast about aimlessly for some time, work¬ 
ing gradually down into a deep and rocky ra¬ 
vine. It was blocked on the east by a huge 
granite slope which evidently formed the crest 
of the wall overlooking the lake. In back here 
Nature had been at work on her usual giant 
scale, for huge bowlders and slabs of granite 
had been pried off the cliff walls by ice action 
to tumble down and fill this gorge. 

They were searching for tracks in between 
the bowlders when Etienne suddenly halted 
and sniffed the air, crossing himself supersti- 
tiously: “De W’ite Bear den—I smell heem, 
me!” His voice shook. “Here was de home 
of de W’ite Bear; I go no furder!” 

“Shucks! C’mon, Etienne—what are you 
scared of?” snorted Ulysses, pushing through 
the rocks with his rifle at ready. “I’d like 
to see that freak animal myself.” 

He had no more than gotten the words out 
when a startled Whoof! came from somewhere 
on ahead. A rank musky odor and the smell 
103 




MEDICINE GOLD 


of old dead flesh drifted down the canon. 
Ulysses ran forward a few paces, but Etienne 
hung back and muttered Aves to himself. 

A crash in the timber. Ulysses looked up 
to see a large white animal ambling swiftly 
up over the rocks, breaking dead timber as 
he ran. It was a bear, by the high clumsy- 
looking gallop of his hind legs, but he ap¬ 
peared silvery white in the moonlight. Ulys¬ 
ses dashed forward for a better sight, then 
raised his rifle, hesitated a moment, and his 
bear was gone. 

“The White Bear of the Naskapi!” he mut¬ 
tered to himself. “So he’s real, eh?” 

“Why you no shoot?” asked Etienne in an 
awed voice, coming up reluctantly. “You 
was scared too?” 

“No; because I did not want to give our 
party away, see?” said Ulysses calmly. “Nice 
trophy—but, you see, if the Naskapi heard my 
shot they’d be warned and start off again in a 
rush. There is no ambush, Etienne! That 
climb up the hill proved that. The Naskapi 
104 . 



THE WAY OF THE NASKAPI 


are camped somewhere near here, and they 
will hit the trail early in the morning. We’d 
better go back and get some sleep.” 

He was about to turn away, when a still 
more overpowering stench in the breeze caused 
him to stifle a sneeze and stop. 

“Might as well see the cave, while I’m here,” 
he muttered. A few steps more brought him 
in front of it. Black and mysterious, it 
yawned above them in the rocks. In front 
of it was a whole votive-offering shop of 
Indian fetishes. Medicine bundles, bunches of 
feathers swaying in the moonlight, prayer 
sticks, oak-framed papoose carriers, a broken 
toboggan, curiously marked skins of animals, 
warped snowshoes of the round Naskapi type, 
once gaudy with feathers, now faded and dusty 
—for years the cave had been a shrine to the 
Naskapi. 

Old Brains stood and surveyed that cave 
with the keenest interest. A knotty mystery 
like this whole business gave him the sort of 
mental exercise his mind delighted in. It was 
105 




MEDICINE GOLD 


a chess problem on a grand scale and Ulysses 
was good at chess and never more dangerous 
than after you had caught his queen. Why 
had the Naskapi instead of the Montaignais 
kidnaped Antoine? Why did they leave the 
Fur Trail at Wamokwa’s cave? What had 
they to do with Nagushwa? The affair bris¬ 
tled with questions like these, and Ulysses had 
no answers as yet. And it was characteristic 
of him that the most important question of all, 
Why did the Naskapi leave no scouts on their 
back trail, or had they? never occurred to him 
at all. 

He was all for solving the motive back of 
this kidnaping. That they should have taken 
the boy and the locket seemed reasonable 
enough when old Brains began to put two 
and two together. To make him open it, of 
course. It had killed every Montaignais who 
tried to get at what was in it; therefore let the 
white boy do it for them. But why the Nas¬ 
kapi? Ulysses knew that they were a wild 
and primitive northern tribe, not at all exer- 
106 



THE WAY OF THE N ASK API 


cised about lands or hunting grounds, for they 
roamed over the whole of north Labrador, 
as far as the Esquimos on the north and the 
Montaignais on the south. If Nagushwa held 
an old deed that antedated Frontenac’s grant, 
that might be of the utmost interest to the 
semi-tame Montaignais, hut it could not con¬ 
cern the Naskapi much. 

Ulysses grinned cheerfully as these thoughts 
whisked through his nimble mind. He was 
getting on with the mystery, just like Sher¬ 
lock Holmes! The motive must be a debt of 
some kind, he decided. Antoine was to be 
delivered to some chief of the Montaignais, 
otherwise the Naskapi would have forced him 
to open the locket long before, if left to them¬ 
selves. Why did they turn off at Wamokwa’s 
cave, then? A rendezvous, evidently. Also 
it suggested to Ulysses that Wamokwa him¬ 
self had something to do with Nagushwa, for 
the debt was to be paid at his cave. Ulysses 
left off his game of inductive logic at this 
point and began to study the cave for more 
107 



MEDICINE GOLD 


information to go on. Black in the moon¬ 
light it yawned before him, its depths invisible. 
Ulysses felt in his pocket for the scrap of 
candle he always carried, called up the super¬ 
stitious Etienne guardedly, and then lit the 
candle back in the depths of the cave. A 
flat wall of stratified rock made the back 
of it, with huge flat shelf leaning out at 
a slight angle overhead. Under foot was 
soft dry dust, scooped and scratched with 
bear-claw marks, quite evidently the place 
where Wamokwa holed up for his nightly 
sleep. 

Ulysses swung the candle around, scruti¬ 
nizing the walls. They were covered with In¬ 
dian picture writing, and, in irregular lines, 
characters composed of curious hooks and 
angles, dots and slanting strokes. 

“Bah gosh, M’sieu, Ah’ll know dat writin’,” 
said Etienne excitedly. “Heem was de Cree 
alphabet. Everybody can read heem, from 
Athabasca Landing to Labrador.” 

Ulysses knew of this alphabet, invented by 
108 



THE WAY OF THE N ASK API 


a missionary many years before. By it all the 
Crees, eastern and western, learned to read 
and write in one day’s study. A sort of syl¬ 
labic shorthand, good for either English or 
Cree, but better for the latter. However, he 
did not encourage Etienne to try just yet, for 
the pictures seemed to tell a story of them¬ 
selves. There was a group consisting of a 
large black bear and a small white one in its 
paw, some Indian figures, and a crude draw¬ 
ing in white clay of a round object hanging 
from a necklace. That group looked prom¬ 
ising! The small white bear was surely Wa- 
mokwa himself, when a cub, and the round 
object was Nagushwa. A trade of some kind 
was pictured here. It all seemed logical to 
Ulysses. The wild Naskapi would prefer a 
medicine animal to a gold bauble in which 
they had no particular interest. Apparently 
the Montaignais had once found a black bear 
with a white cub, and some pact had been made 
with the Naskapi giving them the cub in re¬ 
turn for their securing Nagushwa for the 
109 




MEDICINE GOLD 


Montaignais. That much Ulysses guessed 
from the picture drawing. 

“Read what it says under this, Etienne,” 
he demanded of the habitant. 

Etienne began to mutter to himself in Cree. 

“Heem was say Montaignais geev dat Wa- 
mokwa to dem Naskapi long tarn ago, M’sieu. 
Dey was mak stole Nagushwa, but dat 
Nagushwa heem was be keep at St. Cesare, 
on’stand? When ma boy Antoine come be 
confirm by de Cure we geev him dat 
Nagushwa—” 

“So they never got a chance at it until 
lately, eh? That explains a whole lot!” ex¬ 
ulted Ulysses. “And now you were taking 
it back to the Cure again, eh?” 

“Sacre nom! Moos be!” came back Etienne 
warmly, crossing himself. “Dat Nagushwa, 
heem keel Tawbisnay las’ week. An’ now dey 
was stole ma Antoine!” 

The habitant seemed on the point of blub¬ 
bering afresh so Ulysses led him on with the 
quest hastily. 


110 



THE WAY OF THE NAS RAP I 


“Remains to find out where is Antoine now,” 
he went on cheerily. “Here! Here’s new 
writing, fresh! See the wet daubs of clay. 
Everything that ever happened to the Nas- 
kapi appears to be written down here, I de¬ 
clare!” 

“Moos be,” said Etienne lugubriously. “De 
great Medicine Bear. Heem was be mark by 
Naniboujou, de Great Spirit,” he explained 
reverently. “You M’sieus no keel Wamok- 
wa,” he beseeched earnestly. “De Naskapi 
dey go on warpath, sure ’bout dat!” 

Ulysses felt that that would be a bad move, 
no matter how desirable he might be as a tro¬ 
phy. If they could recover Antoine and per¬ 
haps the locket they were well out of it. But 
where was the boy now? 

The new picture writing was undecipher¬ 
able to him, but Etienne groaned afresh as he 
studied it. It showed a human figure, crudely 
drawn, with lines for arms and legs and body. 
Its right hand held the locket. A burning 
fire showed near by and under the bent knees 
111 



MEDICINE GOLD 


of the figure were two round black balls on 
sticks. 

“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” sobbed Etienne 
afresh. “Ma boy newaire walk again, M’sieu! 
Dey was give him de clay ball torture, so mak 
heem open dat Nagushwa! Oh, Sacre!” 

His wails resembled the moans of some 
stricken animal. It was all Ulysses could do 
to prevent Etienne from dashing off into the 
forest. He finally calmed the distracted hab¬ 
itant enough to get an explanation from him. 
It seemed that this torture consisted in heating 
clay balls scalding hot and doubling up the 
knees of the victim over them so that fearful 
pain was inflicted and unless he gave in swiftly 
the ligaments under the knee would be ruined 
forever. Ulysses gasped with compassion as 
Etienne blubbered out this barbarous inven¬ 
tion. Then he checked him reassuringly. 

“Hold on, old man! It’s not so bad—not 
yet! Here are the balls, right now!” 

He spun Etienne around. Amid the other 
relics and votive offerings were two fresh ones, 
112 



THE WAY OF THE NASK API 


two large clay balls, moist and new, on sticks. 
For some obscure reason the Naskapi had not 
proceeded with the torture until Wamokwa 
himself had given some sign in connection with 
them. Evidently it was their intention to re¬ 
turn here by daylight, when their Medicine 
Men would proclaim whether or no the White 
Bear approved. The thing was baffling to 
Ulysses’ logical mind, a glimpse of the abys¬ 
mal superstition of the wilder red men, but it 
at least gave him a practical thing to work on. 
He straightened himself for action. 

“It’s all right, Etienne!” he declared con¬ 
fidently. “Nothing has been done yet with 
your boy. It will be hopeless for us to try 
to find their camp to-night, but this we can do; 
go back and wake up the husks, and all of us 
ambush them when they come back here to¬ 
morrow. Let’s go!” 

“Bah gosh, suh, dat’s right—sure ’bout dat!” 
returned Etienne brightening up. “To¬ 
morrow Ah’ll brek dem Naskapi in pieces, me! 
You was see!” he growled fiercely shaking his 
113 



MEDICINE GOLD 


burly fists. “Ah’ll mak dem all hairs an’ 
blood!” 

Ulysses laughed and started to retrace his 
way back to the Fur Trail. He had hardly 
gone a dozen yards from the cave before a sud¬ 
den violent rush was made at him from the 
bushes on each side. Fierce and sinewy fin¬ 
gers pinned his arms, and a dirty bandanna 
was whipped across his mouth. He struggled 
with all his strength, while pangs of dismay 
shot through him as he realized that with all 
that exercise of mental keenness he had over¬ 
looked the most important fact of all—that 
the Naskapi had left scouts to watch their 
back trail! Behind him he heard Etienne 
grunting like a bull and striking right and left 
with his fists. The habitant had been far 
quicker with his bodily reaction than he had 
been. A prodigious struggle was going on 
back there, silent and determined on the Nas- 
kapi’s part, full of deep habitant oaths from 
Etienne. Then there was a crash in the 
bushes, stifled groans, sounds of pursuit grow- 
114 



THE WAY OF THE N ASK API 


ing fainter and fainter. Ulysses had ceased 
to struggle. He had no wind, and could 
hardly breathe through that stifling ban¬ 
danna. The hands that held him were of iron. 
He realized with bitterness of soul that the 
Brains, as the Trojans called him, was a pris¬ 
oner of the Naskapi, for all his keen mind. 
Also that the Brains alone held the key to all 
this mystery from start to finish. Then he 
was led off, walking sullenly and thinking 
hard, up a stony trail that led to the rocky 
heights above. 



CHAPTER VI 


THE FIGHT AT THE WATERFALL 

TT TAK’! Wak’ oop, M’sieus! 

M’sieu ’Lyss was be tooken!” 

▼ ▼ The husks rolled up out of a 

snoring sleep. When Diomed found his wits 
his first thought was to belabor Ajax and kick 
him vigorously. 

“Get up, fathead! Asleep at the switch! 
What sort of a sentinel are you, anyway!” 
he roared, punching the bewildered Ajax. 
“What’s the matter, Etienne? Where’s 
’Lyss?” he asked fatuously. 

“Tooken. De Naskapi,” repeated Etienne 
breathlessly. “Me, Ah’ll poonch an’ poonch, 
an’ was gat away. Coom, M’sieus!” 

They grabbed their rifles and shouldered 
their packs to follow him, while Etienne told 
116 


FIGHT AT THE WATERFALL 


in disjointed, breathless sentences the story of 
the visit to the cave of Wamokwa. Diomed 
growled wrathfully. “Let me at ’em, boys! 
Let me at ’em—that’s all!” he kept repeating. 
He swung his rifle unheeded in his left hand 
while his right fist clenched menacingly. In 
a fight Diomed always dropped everything 
and took to his fists. Ajax had turned his 
rifle around and was wielding it now as a sort 
of club. Neither of them had the least idea 
of shooting anybody. The haymaker to the 
jaw, the swat of a gun butt, were what they 
both rejoiced in. Once in sight of the Nas- 
kapi camp, there would be doings of sheer 
muscular force that meant broken heads for 
some one! 

Etienne tracked his route back direct from 
the Fur Trail through the timber toward the 
hill with the cliff overlooking the lake on which 
he knew Wamokwa’s cave was located. His 
woods caution had returned to him at length, 
for, with Indian antagonists, nothing could be 
done save by quiet and stealth. It was his 

m 




MEDICINE GOLD 


plan, he explained to the impatient Diomed, 
to get there silently, without breaking a stick 
if possible, and then either try to track Ulysses 
or else wait for daylight to carry out the 
original plan of Ulysses and ambush the Nas- 
kapi at the bear cave. 

“Huh!” said Ajax. “You just show us 
their camp, that’s all! Di and I are right 
hungry to smack somebody!” He waggled 
his gunstock like a baseball bat. 

“Ah non, M’sieus!” remonstrated Etienne. 
“Moos be dat we was wait. Me, Ah’ll ’fred 
for ma boy Antoine. Dey keel heem if we 
roosh dat camp. No can find, too; sure ’bout 
dat. M’sieu ’Lyss, he right!” 

The husks sighed. Hiding around the bear 
cave until daylight did not suit their impetuous 
natures at all! But Old Brains was right, 
as usual, for here were three strong men and 
to let the Naskapi come to the cave in the 
morning and perform any ceremonial deviltry 
they had in mind would give the three burly 
ones all the advantage of a sudden surprise 
118 



FIGHT AT THE WATERFALL 


attack in which much might be gained and 
many heads broken. They agreed to Eti¬ 
enne’s plan and followed him through the 
woods as quietly as they could. 

After a time the heavy timber gave way to 
bushy and rocky uplands, with bare and broken 
granite cliffs all about. The moon had set 
in the west and all was dim and blurred under 
the light of the waning stars. A faint paling 
in the east told them that the long northern 
twilight of dawn had begun. Ajax and 
Diomed looked about wonderingly as Etienne 
led them through those rocky heights by many 
a detour, never once using any trail, occasion¬ 
ally crossing the one there was to scan it care¬ 
fully for footprints. Neither Antoine’s nor 
Ulysses’ boot heel was to be discovered there. 
The Naskapi were still in their camp, wherever 
that was. 

Finally they reached the environs of the 
cave. Etienne proceeded with extreme cau¬ 
tion, stopping to look and listen for long 
periods. Then, like shadows, they moved on. 

119 



MEDICINE GOLD 


The mouth of the cave yawned before them 
now, black and mysterious. Etienne mo¬ 
tioned to certain bowlders flanking it. The 
husks brightened up as visions of pouncing 
out on the Naskapi with fists and gun butts 
from behind them loomed up attractively. 
They sought shelter in the clefts with grins of 
anticipation, while Etienne picked a spot for 
himself in a cleft above the roof of the cave. 
His plan was evidently to fall on them out of 
the clouds, as it were, punching and kicking. 
“I go woof! lak dat bear; dat was signal,” he 
whispered to them. 

For a time there was naught but a brooding 
silence over all the wilderness, broken only by 
Etienne’s thick breathing; the deep, still 
silence of incipient dawn. Then a dog fox 
yapped a short distance up the gorge. 
Another dog fox answered him from the 
rocky pinnacles below them. Still another 
barked off in the woods. Then an utter 
silence. 

“M’sieus!” came Etienne’s whisper, “he was 
120 




FIGHT AT THE WATERFALL 


no good! When de dog fox bark, de vixen 
answer. Dem was Injuns.” 

Ajax thought and puzzled over their di¬ 
lemma uneasily. The process was difficult 
in the extreme for him. They were discov¬ 
ered and watched, quite evidently, and their 
ambush idea was no good. What to do now? 
Ajax cudgeled his brains and scratched vig¬ 
orously in his hair. And what did those fox 
signals mean? Were they about to be am¬ 
bushed themselves? At the wily game of 
wood craft he and Diomed, and Etienne too, 
were no better than babies compared to the 
Naskapi! Ajax had few ideas and most of 
them born of infinite travail of thought, but 
one of them stuck fast now, and it was that 
this playing the Indian’s game was not for 
him and Di. They would have to get out of 
here and do something entirely different. 

Then he had a grand idea, one that left him 
somewhat breathless with the novelty of it, 
however easily it might have occurred to the 
crafty Ulysses. It was this: the Naskapi 
121 



MEDICINE GOLD 


would have to hit the Fur Trail to-morrow; 
why not sneak away from here and get on the 
trail ahead of them? Then, when they came 
along, make their pounce and rescue Antoine 
and the Brains! 

He crawled along the ground to Diomed’s 
rock and called down Etienne in a guarded 
whisper. 

“It’s this way, fellows,” he said when the 
habitant had joined them. “Our scheme’s 
gone ka-flooey, see? They’re on to us, but I 
have a hunch that they will not come here at 
all, now. They’ll start right off on the march, 
right now, and pull off their torture stunt on 
Antoine, and probably ’Lyss also, somewhere 
else. It’s up to us to beat them to it and get 
on the Fur Trail ahead of them, when we can 
pick our place to light into ’em. Huh?” 

“Dey was no coom here now,” agreed 
Etienne. “Injun no lak fight. Dey roon. 
Coom, M’sieus, moos be dat we go fast.” 

He had decided with the swift logic of the 
man of the woods. It remained only to get 
122 



FIGHT AT THE WATERFALL 


away with sufficient stealth to leave the Nas- 
kapi scouts under the impression that they 
were still at the cave. Etienne proceeded to 
put that into action, for, silently pointing to 
a huge and blurred mass of rocks to the west 
as a rendezvous, he dropped on the ground 
and disappeared from sight. Ajax and 
Diomed separated and each began his own 
crawl. 

They had gone perhaps fifty yards and 
were getting on with it famously when a low 
and scornful laugh from somewhere up in the 
heights rang out and then the vigorous hooting 
of a barred owl. Ajax cursed silently and 
made for the rendezvous in desperate haste. 
Even this maneuver of theirs had been seen! 
There was only one thing to do now, to get 
to the Fur Trail first and then fall on the 
Naskapi the instant they came along. 

The woods seemed full of hooting owls as he 
met Diomed rising out of the bushes and found 
Etienne waiting for them under the shadow 
of a great split cliff. Without a word they 
123 



MEDICINE GOLD 


followed him on the run, and presently came 
upon a trail that led west. Etienne was 
breathing heavily and he ran silently along it, 
his moccasined feet making not a sound. 
They broke out on the Fur Trail at a fast trot 
by the time it became light enough to see. No 
fresh tracks were in it, but they had the game 
in their own hands now. 

“It’s this way, fellows!” exulted Ajax. 
“If we find no tracks ahead, they are still in 
the woods, see, and if they don’t come along 
presently we’ll know they have gone to the 
cave and can catch ’em there. Either way 
we’ve got ’em.” 

“Dey no go to dat cave!” Etienne was 
shaking his head vigorously. “Injuns was 
’fred of de Mounted Police lak everyteeng. 
Dey no do nothing to ma boy here. How 
dey know we was not de Police? Me feel 
pooty good, me! Roon, M’sieus!” 

They dashed along the Trail, watching its 
grassy width carefully for fresh footprints. 
A quarter of a mile further Etienne stopped 
124 




FIGHT AT THE WATERFALL 


with a grunt of dismay. “Too late, M’sieus! 
We was not queek ’nuff. Bah gosh, here was 
ma Antoine, an’ M’sieu ’Lyss too!” 

Fresh tracks filled the Trail. Antoine’s 
small boot heel; Ulysses’ cruiser moccasins; 
about a dozen in-toed prints of Indian feet. 

“Two Montaignais, nine Naskapi was be,” 
declared Etienne, after a hasty examination 
of the moccasin prints. “We roon, M’sieus! 
Hurry, mon Dien!” 

Down into a deep and swampy valley and 
then up on to a high and barren country 
strewn thick with great white bowlders the 
Fur Trail led, with as yet no view of the In¬ 
dians. They must have broken camp with 
celerity and hit the trail by a short cut known 
to them at least half an hour before Etienne 
and the husks had, Diomed figured. 

A mile further on Etienne stopped and 
pointed down at the earth before their feet. 
“Look—de track of de W’ite Bear, M’sieus!” 
he grunted. 

Deep prints, like some crooked-palmed hand 
125 




MEDICINE GOLD 


crossed the Fur Trail, but in the place of fin¬ 
gers were five long claw marks, all bunched 
together. 

“Black bear, all right!” said Diomed. “I’ve 
followed ’em too often in the South not to 
know. So he’s white, eh, Etienne?” 

“Yaas, de great Medicine Bear of de Nas- 
kapi. Naniboujou, de Great Spirit, was 
mark heem,” said Etienne reverently. “You 
no shoot heem, M’sieus! Naskapi coom mooch 
mad.” 

“Let’s try a trot, fellows,” said Ajax lis¬ 
tening impatiently, for Etienne seemed almost 
a pagan airing these “views” and he was not 
impressed with the importance of the White 
Bear. “They can’t be far ahead of us now.” 

They broke into a run, toiling up the slope 
of a huge ridge that cut off the sky ahead. 
Near its summit Etienne slowed down and they 
all waited while he went on alone to recon- 
noiter over the brink. Then he waved vigor¬ 
ously for them to come ahead. 

Down below them lay a wooded valley, and 
126 



FIGHT AT THE WATERFALL 


at one point, rising like a scar through the 
trees, a bare streak of the Fur Trail showed. 
As they watched it the party of Naskapi came 
in sight, hastening up it in single file, though 
they seemed merely crawling at that distance. 
They could even make out Antoine’s little fig¬ 
ure, led along by a thong no doubt, and with 
him the luckless Brains. 

“Two miles ahead,” declared Ajax. “There 
they both are! We’ll get ’em, fellows!” 

They could hardly wait for the Indians to 
disappear around the bend in the trees. An 
hour later—it was nearly noon—and they had 
come up that scar themselves. It gave on a 
ridge, where another lookout could be had over 
the country. Etienne stopped and pointed to 
the west, where dark and massive thunderheads 
were rising over the horizon. He shook his 
head and crossed himself as a vivid lightning 
flash cleft the bank of clouds. 

“Tonnerre! — Sacre!” he exclaimed, hoarsely, 
in awed tones. 

“Huh? What’s eatin’ you now, old-timer?” 

127 




MEDICINE GOLD 


growled Ajax. “It’s just an ordinary 
thunderstorm coming up.” 

“Mon dieu , nonl” retorted Etienne vehe¬ 
mently. “Tonnerre, she was newair coom— 
dis tam of year—not once in t’irty year, mebbe. 
De Naskapi was t’ink heem T’under Bird 
coom now. Sacre! Ah’ll not know what dey 
do with ma boy!” he blubbered. 

The despair in his tones was very real and it 
quelled a laugh that had arisen over those 
vague Indian superstitions that the unusual 
thunderstorm might inflame. The husks re¬ 
alized dimly the seriousness of it all. They 
raced along the path, urged on by forebodings 
of what was soon to happen to Ulysses and the 
young habitant boy—for this omen of the 
Thunder Bird would undoubtedly encourage 
the Naskapi to decisive action. 

The Fur Trail dipped down into a hollow 
in the bare hills and rose again rapidly to a 
sky line. They all quickened their pace, eager 
to learn what might be on the other side of that 
bowldered ridge. As they topped the rise, 
128 



FIGHT AT THE WATERFALL 


Diomed stopped and pointed. Far below 
them was a dense, wooded valley, dark green 
with the thick spires of black spruce. Water 
flowed down there, for white mist rose over 
the forest at its deepest part. The shelter of 
this deep ravine had given the forest trees a 
chance to survive. 

“Chute a pic —how you call heem—water¬ 
fall, dere,” announced Etienne, “beeg wan— 
mooch mist! Hurry, M’sieus!” 

They trotted down into the valley. Soon 
the path was threading through dense walls 
of spruce, and what had been a faint whisper 
of falling waters now rang in a deep muttered 
growl in their ears. Occasionally a heavier 
cannonade of thunder boomed out, mingling 
with and accentuating the roar of the falls. 
At sound of it Etienne burst into as fast a run 
as his short heavy legs would permit. The 
others loped on after him easily. 

Louder and more terrible and menacing be¬ 
came the roar of the cataract. They were 
passing somewhere below it, they judged 
129 



MEDICINE GOLD 


by the sound. Then Etienne stopped and held 
out his arm. A gleam of agitated water 
showed up ahead in a cleft in the trail. The 
Trojans gathered in a knot behind him while 
he stepped forward cautiously. The dense 
bush thinned out. Through the tree trunks 
they could now see the swirling waters of a 
dark pool, eddying and boiling in a wide whirl¬ 
pool. At a sign from Etienne they crept into 
the underbrush and pushed through to where 
they could look out. 

Above them thundered a mighty cataract, 
a whole river falling in a shaggy white veil into 
the black and boiling pool before them. The 
deep boom of it drowned every other sound. 
Above it was an upper fall, seemingly noise¬ 
less, its own thunder obliterated by the grand 
turmoil of the lower falls. Beyond that, sharp 
and white against the black pall of the thunder 
clouds, was a long granite rock, curiously 
knobbed with what looked like four immovable 
bowlders. On both sides of the gap rose green 
tufts of trees and walls of cliffs. 


130 



FIGHT AT THE WATERFALL 


Diomed watched the mighty scene above 
him, fascinated, before he gave the lower pool 
so much as a thought. Etienne was nudging 
him vigorously and as Diomed looked he 
pointed across the pool from them. A gray 
beach of flat pebbles inclosed the lower pool 
of the falls and on it were gathered the whole 
band of the Naskapi. Some were making in¬ 
cantations to the approaching thundercloud; 
more of them were gathered in a knot behind 
their chief, near whom lay a great bare trunk 
that sloped down the beach and jutted out into 
the whirlpool made by the falling torrent. 

“Ah Sacre! M’sieus! Look! Look! Li¬ 
able!” gasped Etienne, bounding to his feet. 
Diomed restrained him for an instant to get a 
grip on the situation himself. 

A single human figure was kneeling out on 
the end of that trunk, begging, beseeching, 
pleading. It was young Antoine, Diomed saw, 
and he was holding Nagushwa in one hand 
while with t 1 j other he gripped a short stub 
that helped him maintain a precarious footing. 

131 



MEDICINE GOLD 


A stout and burly chief, wrapped in a white 
blanket with wide blue borders that fell below 
his knees, was haranguing the boy fiercely, but 
Antoine kept shaking his head stubbornly. 
Immediately, at a sign from the chief, two 
strong bucks began slowly to roll the log. It 
swayed from side to side in the current, while 
Antoine waved his free hand with Nagushwa 
in it at them in terror, but he would not give 
in. Diomed grasped his fearful dilemma in¬ 
stantly. To fall off the log into the whirlpool 
would sweep him to death under the falls; for 
him to attempt to open the locket would be 
equally fatal! 

Diomed rolled up his sleeves and passed 
his rifle to Etienne: “Shoot, if they get ugly. 
I’m going out there,” he growled. 

Totally unarmed, his burly figure raced out 
of the bushes and crossed the beach toward the 
Naskapi. A vigorous yell from him attracted 
their attention. The chief signaled the two 
men at the log to stop and turned to face him. 
Diomed gave him not so much as a word but 
132 



FIGHT AT THE WATERFALL 


strode by him, his fists clenched, and made for 
the two bucks at the log end. 

“Beat it! Move! Before I hurt you!” he 
yelled, charging at them in the boxer’s crouch. 

An angry bravado of grunts answered him 
—but Diomed’s fist shot out and one buck was 
driven sprawling across the strand. The other 
backed off, then turned and ran for his weap¬ 
ons as a peal of thunder crashed out overhead. 
The reverberations of it came tumbling about 
their ears. Diomed stood guarding the end 
of the log, while Antoine crawled back to 
safety. War-whoops rang in the universal 
bellow of the falls. The Naskapi leaped in a 
disorderly mob for their trade muskets, which, 
carelessly, had been left standing in the timber. 
Then they came back toward him, threaten¬ 
ing and angry. 

Diomed turned to face them fearlessly, with 
Antoine at his back. He held up his hand 
for them to stop: “The first buck who starts 
anything I’ll sure wear him out!” he rasped, 
stepping forward, his fierce eyes seeking out 
133 



MEDICINE GOLD 


one after another of the party. “Where’s 
the other white man?” They recoiled a little. 
This fist-swinging white youth reminded them 
altogether too much of the ways of the 
Mounted Police. Again came a crash of thun¬ 
der, and a piercing war yell went up. A mus¬ 
ket was cocked and pointed. Diomed rushed 
for the man, another stumbled back against 
him as his iron fist knocked him down, and the 
gun went off, hitting nobody. At the same in¬ 
stant men seemed falling on the Naskapi out 
of the skies, for blows that drove the Indians 
spinning seemed raining upon them from every 
quarter. Etienne and Ajax had crept around 
through the timber and fallen on them from 
the rear at the moment of Dionied’s rush. 
There were surprised screeches, guns flew 
harmlessly on the stones, a melee of lunging 
and striking whites and writhing and twisting 
Naskapi. Out of it squirmed the chief, yell¬ 
ing for his followers. They drew off, some 
still armed with their trade muskets, some 
flashing out knives. Three of them lay 
134 




FIGHT AT THE WATERFALL 


stunned and unconscious on the strand, where 
Ajax’s ungentle gun butt had tapped them. 

There was a short breathing truce. The 
whites drew slowly back with Antoine toward 
their weapons, for the Indians looked ugly 
and full of fight. As for Ulysses, they had 
discovered him—tied firmly to a tree, his 
mouth gagged, his black slanting eyes glinting 
at them indignantly. The Brains was almost 
funny in his present predicament and Diomed 
laughed as he faced the Indians figuring out 
how to knock down two of them at once in a 
rush for Ulysses. 

Then a Naskapi yelled and pointed up at 
the cliffs back of them. All eyes followed his 
finger. High up on the ledge above stood 
Wamokwa, the White Bear—the Medicine 
Bear of the Naskapi. Accustomed to a life¬ 
long immunity, he swayed stolidly on his pin¬ 
nacle, his muzzle snuffing the tainted air that 
came up to him. 

“Sacre !—Heem was mean war!—Moos be 
we fight with rifles!” barked Etienne, who was 
135 



MEDICINE GOLD 


the first to grasp the full significance of it. 

The chief glanced up at the Wamokwa a 
moment, then grunted passionately, cocked 
his musket and aimed it at Diomed. 

The burly youth made for him defiantly. 
“Shoot, Indian—you’ll get hung for it! Bet¬ 
ter drop it” he yelled, and then charged. 

Whatever the outcome, a sharp crash of a 
rifle bellowed out from somewhere up in the 
falls, keen as the crack of a whip above the tu¬ 
mult of the waters. There came a fast, tear¬ 
ing sound as if one had ripped a yard of cloth, 
and then a shower of stones flew up from the 
track and pelted the chief with stinging vio¬ 
lence. He turned and fell, a hand to his tem¬ 
ple. Every one looked up at the top of the 
falls from whence had come the shot. 

On the knife edge of the granite rock above 
the topmost brink now stood four human fig¬ 
ures. The black outlines of rifles crossed 
their forked silhouettes, and one of them was 
aiming. Then came a puff of smoke. The bul¬ 
let ripped through the air high above their 
136 



FIGHT AT THE WATERFALL 


heads. It sang like a bee and there came a 
dull smack, instantly followed by a squall of 
rage and pain. They looked up on the cliffs 
above them—to see the White Bear tumbling, 
falling, clawing at the spruces, dropping down 
from crag to ledge, to fall with a ponderous 
thud into the thick timber near them. 

Grunts of rage and dismay came from the 
Naskapi. Their great Medicine Bear had been 
shot! 

The chief gave one wild look around—at the 
four figures standing grimly on the rock above 
but easily within rifle range, at the silent knot 
of whites before him, with Antoine and Eti¬ 
enne now both carrying rifles, at the place 
where the sacred Medicine Bear had fallen 
to his death—and then in a hoarse chorus of 
grunts the Naskapi all turned and bolted in¬ 
continently into the forest, to vanish instantly 
from sight. 

For some moments the unbroken thunder 
of the falls alone held entire sway over the 


scene. 


137 



MEDICINE GOLD 


“Well—and that’s that!” gritted Diomed, 
grimly. He had not moved from his tracks 
since the chief’s gun bore on him, and he was 
still unarmed. He drew his hunting knife 
and freed Ulysses in two vigorous slashes. 
Then he waved to the four figures up on the 
rock, who waved their rifles hilariously back 
at him. 





CHAPTER VII 


WAMOKWA, THE WHITE BEAR 

T HAT mighty cascade of La Riviere du 
Nbrd dominated everything. Its por¬ 
tentous voice drowned every other 
sound, so that signaling was futile, and its 
boiling mists again and again obliterated the 
little group of pygmy humans standing up on 
the granite knife-edge beyond the brink of the 
upper falls. It was difficult to translate their 
waving arms into any sort of intelligible mes¬ 
sage. That they were His Lordship, Bob, 
Patroclus and Nishimi-wog there could be no 
shadow of doubt, but what they wanted and 
why they did not leave the rock and come down, 
the Trojans watching them from the strand 
of the lower falls pool could not understand. 
And, while attempting some sort of corn- 
139 


MEDICINE GOLD 


munication, Naniboujou, the Great Spirit of 
the North, took that thundercloud and emptied 
it upside down over the entire scene. The 
rain came down in sheets; thunder roared and 
cannonaded in the cliffs; the falls took on an 
awful sublimity, sheeted in torrents of falling 
rain, yet themselves falling, falling, endlessly 
in an intolerable roar, the whole body of the 
river leaping down in sheets of foam. 

The Trojans gathered, soaked and shiver¬ 
ing, under a large spruce and watched the tre¬ 
mendous spectacle, overwhelmed, while Ulys¬ 
ses told them of his adventures at the cave of 
Wamokwa. “Bad business killing that bear, 
you’ll see, boys,” he concluded, “we’ll have 
both the Naskapi and Montaignais to deal 
with now, Wamokwa and Nagushwa!” The 
rest, fascinated by the spectacle before them, 
could not yet feel the situation as he did. It 
was Etienne, himself the most familiar with 
the sterner moods of Nature, who was the first 
to speak of the practical bearings of this 
thunderstorm upon them: 

140 



THE WHITE BEAR 


“Mooch bad! Dese was mooch bad, for 
Lord Jeem an’ dem boys, up dere,” he said, 
shaking his head ominously. 

“Shucks, Etienne!” retorted Ulysses. 
“They’re better off than we are. They have 
the canoe and can turn it over and lie under it 
and let her rain.” 

“Bah gosh, boy, you know not’ing ’bout dese 
kan of rivers!” cried Etienne. “Heem was 
rise of it, ten, mebbe, twenty feet in dese rains. 
Dey was to be wash off dat rock over de falls, 
sure!” he prophesied forebodingly. 

The Trojans looked at each other with an 
alarm that all the terrific voices of Nature had 
not yet been able to awaken. What Etienne 
had said might be only too true. In twenty 
minutes more, even, of this cloud-burst, the 
river would become a raging torrent that no 
man dare remain near. The very strand that 
they were on would be inundated, swept by a 
rabble of logs and floating driftwood, combed 
by strumming waves that would engulf them 
all. 


141 



MEDICINE GOLD 


“Don’t you think they will realize that 
and get off the rock before it is too late, 
Etienne?” asked Diomed. 

“Nishimi-wog, heem know,” replied Etienne. 
“But I t’ink, me, dat dey no can get off. I 
saw mooch water on hose sides of dem rock 
befo’ de rain was come.” 

“That settles it. That’s what they were 
signaling when the rain hid them from 
us!” declared Ajax, springing to his feet. 
“C’mon, fellows, it’s up to us. We’ve got to 
get up there somehow and take them off.” 

Out into the downpour they plunged. The 
woods were filled with rain haze, were incon¬ 
ceivably wet, and each surcharged bough shed 
ice-cold sluices of water which their clothes 
soaked up like a sponge. Up and up the huge 
shoulder around the edge of the falls they 
climbed, torn with anxiety, reckless with haste, 
calling to each other above the shouting din of 
the falls, ducking involuntarily at the pealing 
crashes of thunder overhead. The whole basin 
of the falls was filled with boiling steam like a 
142 



THE WHITE BEAR 


caldron. You could see nothing out there. 
More than once the party found themselves 
wandering dangerously over to the edge. 
Then at last Ajax and Diomed, who were 
leading, yelled to the others and pointed to a 
white foam of waters racing past them below. 
Through the bushes and tree trunks they could 
now make out the upper river flowing past, its 
surface stippled with the deluge of raindrops. 
Logs, roots, branches, borne on its current, 
shot past, to plunge with a dull boom over the 
brink of the insatiable upper falls. 

Diomed shouted across to the granite ledge 
as they burst through the brush and gathered 
on a rocky promontory which jutted out op¬ 
posite to it. Already the water had risen three 
feet, and it laved and lapped hungrily around 
what was left of the rock. The canoe lay 
turned over on the highest part of the ledge; 
evidently those under it were watching toward 
the lower pool, hoping against hope for the 
rain to lift. 

Then a head poked out from under its 
143 



MEDICINE GOLD 


gunwale on their side. The face was Bob’s. 
They could see his mouth forming in a shout 
of relief, and then the canoe rose and turned 
over while all four jumped to their feet, caper¬ 
ing and yelling with delight. They saw John 
Charley jump for the bow of the canoe, and 
presently he straightened up with a coil of its 
tracking rope in his hands. He was about 
to attempt a first cast with it when Etienne 
roared out a fearful cry and pointed upstream. 
A great tree trunk was bobbing down to¬ 
ward the rock, heading for it viciously, its 
roots rolling and turning like writhing tenta¬ 
cles as it charged down on the rock. It struck 
the granite with a dull boom and rode up on the 
slope. Lord Jim leaped and dodged it, while 
Nishimi-wog and Bob and Patroclus seized 
the canoe gunwale to prevent it being butted 
bodily off the rock. The eager current swept 
the tree’s upper branches around and then all 
their hearts went to their throats as its roots 
churned and twisted across the rock, sweeping 
everything before them. For a tense instant 
144 




THE WHITE BEAR 


Bob was caught in the tangle, but the others 
dragged him out of danger. 

The tree top swung around in a vast circle 
and jammed hard against their own rock 
promontory, while the Trojans dodged broken 
branches hurled all about them. Then they all 
howled with j oy, for it looked like a most prov¬ 
idential natural bridge. They saw that His 
Lordship was for climbing across it immedi¬ 
ately but John Charley was holding him back 
by main force. The two struggled and fought 
on the rocks. Even while rashness and ex¬ 
perience were fighting there for the mastery, 
the river backed up and cascaded over the tree 
trunk in a white deluge. Driftwood piled 
against it in a rapidly forming dam, and then, 
with a dull crack, the trunk parted in two and 
both ends swept on down, to uprear and plunge 
over the falls. Nothing could stop that river, 
the Trojans realized with a gasp of dismay— 
nothing could brook its headstrong will for a 
single instant! 

John Charley shouted across at them and 
145 



MEDICINE GOLD 


motioned to catch the tracking rope. It 
swung through the air, flashed along the 
granite like a snake, and was gone before any 
one could grab it. The Indian coiled it up 
again and cast a second time. A dozen hands 
groped for it in mid-air. A sharp snap, and it 
hung fast in Ajax’s huge paw. He looked 
around for the stoutest sapling to which the 
rope would reach. Out of the cleft behind 
him grew a sturdy birch which the rope would 
just reach, leaving John Charley some two 
feet at his end to secure to the canoe. The 
Trojans tied their end in a secure fisherman’s 
bend and then all pulled on it to test the 
strength of the roots. 

At a signal from them His Lordship stepped 
to the brink, fearless, debonair. He grinned 
at them, laughed something over his shoulder 
to the other three who were sitting in the canoe 
to hold it down, and then plunged in. In¬ 
stantly the rope sagged in a taut V. His 
whole body was at the mercy of the current 
which tore and dragged at him with fierce fin- 
146 



THE WHITE BEAR 


gers. They could see the white knuckles of 
his clenched hands as slowly he rolled and 
swayed his way across. His gleaming teeth 
showed, set and gritted, with every ounce of 
his will power and endurance in play. Ajax 
shook his head. Bob could hardly make that 
crossing—Patroclus never! 

Eager hands grabbed Lord Jim the minute 
he arrived within reach. Panting, spent, grim, 
they hauled him out on the rock. His blue 
eyes gleamed at them unconquerably as he rose 
and staggered to his feet. 

‘‘Topping, y’ know!—isn’t it?—what!” he 
grinned at them. “But that’s rather a sporty 
crossing for the boys to try.” 

The fertile Ulysses had an idea evidently, 
for he ran down to the edge of their rock: 
“Oh, Bob!—put—your—belt—under—your 
—armpits—and—around—the—rope!” he 

yelled. 

Bob nodded, comprehending. Old Brains 
was always there in a pinch! With one arm 
over the rope and the additional security of 

m 



MEDICINE GOLD 


the belt, he hauled himself across hand over 
hand, a far less dangerous passage than His 
Lordship’s. When at length unbuckled and 
freed he leaped for the Brains with glad grat¬ 
itude in his eyes. 

“That was a life-saver, ’Lyss!” he shouted, 
pounding him on the back again and again. 
“Some one in this crowd’s got to be around 
to produce a real idea once in awhile! You’ve 
saved Pat, too, I’ll bet!” 

Patroclus came over in the same way with¬ 
out incident. He was light and slender and 
the waves touched him gently, if that ever could 
be said of a foaming monster like this river, 
but somehow its grip seemed less fierce. Ex¬ 
cept for a playful billet of timber which tried 
to ram him, he got over scot-free. 

Then John Charley came down, waving his 
arms and gesticulating, making expressive 
pantomimes. Across the gap they could see 
his wild eyes gleaming in a fire of courage and 
daring, and his actions as regards the canoe 
were unmistakable. 


148 



THE WHITE BEAR 


“My word! He’s coming across in the ca¬ 
noer gasped His Lordship. “He’s going to 
attempt your scheme, Pat—with variations. 
Daring, rather 1 Get a half-turn of that rope 
around the sapling, boys, so we can take up 
his slack.” 

They untied the rope, and as many as could 
got hold of its free end, after a single hitch 
had been taken around the tree. John Char¬ 
ley, who had been lashing in the packs, waved 
his approval and then, with a wild and reck¬ 
less shout, he raised the canoe by the gun¬ 
wales, plunged it in with bows upstream, and 
shoved off in one mighty thrust. It shot 
across, the Trojans pulling in madly on the 
slack. For once the river was taken unawares. 
The canoe had nearly reached the opposite rock 
before the mad current seized it and whirled it 
downstream. Then the rope went taut, 
groaned, thinned, smoked. They held their 
breaths and prayed as the canoe was hurled 
broadside against the alder bank below the 
rock. John Charley grabbed branches and 
149 



MEDICINE GOLD 


hung fast. Inch by inch his brawny strength 
forced the canoe in. The others ran down 
along the rope and pulled in the bow—out of 
the grip of rushing waters that foamed and 
spouted around and over it. Once inside the 
eddy around the rock, the canoe shot toward 
them like a bullet and John Charley was cata¬ 
pulted heels over head forward as her bow 
struck. 

They helped him ashore and pulled up the 
canoe. 

“Bah gosh!—I was beat dat oY riviere, me!” 
grinned John Charley, as they crowded around 
him. That was all he said, but His Lordship 
voiced the thoughts of all the rest about him. 

“Topping, my dear chap! simply rippin’!” 
he beamed. “For sheer daring and courage, 
commend me to your American red man, 
boys!” 

At last they were all reunited and had an 
opportunity to compare and explain, while 
Etienne and John Charley were rigging a rain 
shelter of the canoe and tarp. Under it a fire 
150 



THE WHITE BEAR 


was lighted and all their spare food cooked, 
for every one was famished. 

“Who shot the White Bear?” asked Ulysses 
as the opening question, when their appetites 
had slacked a little. His Lordship pointed to 
Bob. “Nice shot, that. Four hundred yards 
at least.” 

“Let me tell you, Bob, that was the very 
worst thing you fellows could have done,” de¬ 
clared the Brains. “That was Wamokwa, the 
Medicine Bear of the Naskapi, Bob, their sa¬ 
cred animal. We’ll catch hot shot from them 
for it, mark me!” Then he told them all of 
the trade of Wamokwa as a cub for the Nas- 
kapi’s help in securing Nagushwa which he 
and Etienne had deciphered at the cave. 

Diomed shrugged his shoulders indiffer¬ 
ently. “Your shot won the fight for us, 
though, Bob. Looked like a fine scrimmage 
coming off down there to me. I’m not worry¬ 
ing about their blamed bear.” 

“Me either, my word!” agreed His Lord- 
ship. “We saw the blighters coming in down 
151 



MEDICINE GOLD 


there with young Antoine and Ulysses and 
thought it best to lie low and watch a bit. It 
was only a little later when your party, or 
rather you alone, Di, rushed in on them. We 
were about to open fire on those blackguards 
who were going to duck the boy, when you 
burst like a bombshell on them. Rawther 
neat, that, Di! No shooting the natives, y’ see. 
It’s our way always. Then we had nothing to 
do but wait until we judged the right time to 
interfere had come. I aimed low at the chief 
with my express rifle, for I knew what its bul¬ 
let could do in the way of driving stones— 
knocked down a Masai with it in Africa once 
the same way. That rifle has an awful punch 
altogether, my word!—The rest you know.” 

“I’d like to go get that bear, though,” said 
Bob. “A polar bear’s something of a trophy, 
you know.” 

“Heem no polar bear,” put in Etienne. 
“Heem was white black bear, I tol’ you. 
Wamokwa—Heap Medicine of the Naskapi.” 

“Ugh!” ejaculated Nishimi-wog emphat- 
152 



THE WHITE BEAR 


ically, shaking his head. “You no go back 
down dere!” 

It was the sinister way in which he said it 
rather than the words themselves that made 
them all stop and look at him inquiringly. 
There was stern warning in those tones, a 
certain disapproval, too, as if John Charley, 
the Indian, felt outraged that these sacrile¬ 
gious whites all deserved dire retribution. 

“How?” asked Bob. “Why not?—Why 
can’t I?” 

“You keel de beeg Medicine of de Naskapi. 
Dey mooch mad. De whole tribe was come 
keel you, pooty soon.” 

John Charley’s tones rang like a judgment. 

It was a mighty serious thing to molest an 
animal reverenced by a whole tribe of Indians. 
They all felt, uneasily, that he was right in 
this, and that the quicker they got away the 
less trouble there would be. 

“Boy—Leesten! Naniboujou, heem geeve 
you your life. Take eet and get out of dees 
co’ntry, alive,” growled Nishimi-wog sullenly. 

153 



MEDICINE GOLD 


Bob himself began to feel almost like an 
outcast over those words of Nishimi-wog’s. 
There was something so essentially Indian in 
feeling in his ominous tones that he could not 
escape a sort of self-conviction of somehow 
having been guilty of some enormous crime. 
He turned to the others to learn their judg¬ 
ment upon what was to be done next—whether 
to go back down below the lower falls and look 
for his lawful trophy, the White Bear, or to 
take Nishimi-wog’s warning as showing the 
typical Indian attitude toward his act as a 
white man. 

The others seemed disturbed, uneasy, anx¬ 
ious to go, to get away while there was yet 
time, before anything worse could befall them. 
They were well out of it so far; had got back 
Antoine and the fateful Nagushwa—only to 
incur this new menace. If the tones of almost 
shocked disapproval that lay back of Nishimi- 
wog’s words were a reliable sign, they had 
come into a far worse danger as a result of 
Bob’s shot. 


154 



THE WHITE BEAR 


“I fawncy, Bob, that the Naskapi have al¬ 
ready taken the skin of your freak trophy,” 
said His Lordship. “The blighters did not 
run far after the first scare of their sacred 
animal tumbling down among them. I’ll war¬ 
rant it will be kept as big medicine in some 
lodge bundle, from now on, from what I’ve 
read of your North American Indians.” 

Bob hated to give his trophy up, the only 
one of the trip so far for him, and a rare curios¬ 
ity at that, but the sentiment of the crowd 
seemed against him. And what the Naskapi 
would do about it he could not fathom. 

The guides said the decisive word for them: 
“You was right, sure ’bout dat, John,” 
said Etienne, looking understanding^ into 
Nishimi-wog’s eyes. “De Injuns was be 
hugly. If M’sieu wishes, we go get dat skin,” 
he offered, turning to Bob. “No? Den we 
go queek; find um portage trail up ’round dis 
falls, an’ git away from here.” 

They rose and went into the forest. Bob 
was still undecided. He went back to that 
155 



MEDICINE GOLD 


shoulder of the hill where they had climbed 
up from the lower falls and sat down, trying 
to puzzle out the effect of the loss of 
Wamokwa on the Naskapi in connection with 
their pact with the Montaignais over Na- 
gushwa. It surely was a problem. The rain 
had subsided to a mere drizzle, the thunder- 
squall having gone on north, but its aftermath 
in the brown flood of the lower pool decided 
the question of the White Bear trophy for him 
forever, with a finality that was Nature’s own. 
A white-capped torrent of muddy waters, toss¬ 
ing with driftwood, flooded over the whole 
beach where Diomed had encountered the 
Naskapi. To cross the river anywhere below, 
to the other side where the White Bear had 
fallen under the cliffs, was now beyond the 
ability of any puny party of mortals what¬ 
ever. The Naskapi, too, were on that side. 
They could not cross either, so that their own 
crowd was safe from reprisal for the time, 
even if they sent runners for reenforcements. 

Bob turned away at length. “Well, good- 
156 



THE WHITE BEAR 


by, old fellow —my trophy!” He exclaimed. 
“You will always exist, in memory, for me! 
But it looks like a worse time than ever with 
the Indians, for us. Wamokwa and Na- 
gushwa!—We’d better strike down the Rocher 
River for St. Cesare without delay!” 

By the time he reached camp again Nishimi- 
wog and Etienne had returned and the Tro¬ 
jans were busy untying the canoe from the 
two trees and making up their packs. Fol¬ 
lowing the canoe they all started off through 
the wet brush, skirting along small ravines, 
dipping into hollows and crossing timbered 
flats, finally to arrive in a blazed path that was 
the portage trail. 

His Lordship, noting that Bob was still 
distrait and silent, put his arm around his 
shoulder as they started up the trail to the 
river. “It’s all right, dear old chap,” he 
soothed. “Don’t worry a little bit, ye know. 
We may have stirred up something of a 
hornet’s nest, but that shot of yours was the 
right thing at the right time, my word! I 
157 



MEDICINE GOLD 


haven’t a doubt that it saved Diomed a nawsty 
scrimmage—didn’t it?” 

Bob gave him a grateful look, hut he said 
nothing. He was still concerned in trying 
to puzzle the thing out, to discover its causes 
and effects. He liked to put himself in the 
other fellow’s place and then reason from that 
starting point; but, hang it, you couldn’t do 
that with the Indians. Causes that to a white 
man would be insignificant might to them be 
portentous. 

What would be the Naskapi reaction to the 
death of the White Bear? One could not 
be cocksure about that at all. As Bob tried 
to reason he found out that he did not know 
the Indian mind at all. It was an unknown 
country to him. His only clue was the tone 
in which John Charley Nishimi-wog had said: 
“You no go back down dere!” 

How sinister had been that warning! 
John Charley himself seemed somehow im¬ 
measurably shocked. Bob, to the Indian 
mind, had committed a terrible sacrilege, he 
158 



THE WHITE BEAR 


seemed to think; would the Naskapi answer 
be a violent reprisal or merely a despairing 
release of the white men as too strong for 
them? The primitive Indians always rever¬ 
enced animals, he knew; regarded them as in 
every way superior beings to themselves. 
The animals had keener eyesight, better ears, 
stronger muscles, superior quickness; were 
better equipped for the forest life than the 
red men, who had to rely on bow and spear 
to help out their dull senses and puny strength. 
How different was this point of view from 
the white man’s, accustomed to regard him¬ 
self as unquestionably the lord of creation! 
And the Indians invariably worshiped a freak 
animal, as obviously endowed by the Great 
Spirit with supernatural qualities. That was 
how the Naskapi regarded their white black 
bear. Bob could not help but feel that there 
would be dire retribution for his hasty shot. 
And then, what would the Montaignais do 
next about Nagushwa? Would both of them 
try for it now, the Naskapi for revenge, the 
159 




MEDICINE GOLD 


Montaignais because of its connection with 
their lands? Was there anything in it which 
would constitute a flaw in Frontenac’s title 
in the white government’s eyes? If so, would 
this whole territory be given over to lumber¬ 
men and pulp men—those pests of the wilder¬ 
ness? 

These were unpleasant questions, and they 
had reached the end of the trail before 
Bob had finished puzzling over the prob¬ 
able outcome of it all. The canoe landing 
was in a little backwater which gave on 
the main river, which could be seen rushing 
by, swollen and sullen, past a point some fifty 
yards away. It was their passing this back¬ 
water inadvertently that had made them miss 
the portage on the trip down. 

“Dah!—now who was be go?” asked 
Etienne, looking around with his brown hands 
gripping the canoe gunwale. 

Bob stood up immediately, bent on denying 
himself any immunity from the Naskapi by 
the canoe: “Your boy, for one, Etienne,” 
160 



THE WHITE BEAR 


he suggested, pointing out Antoine; “Pat, for 
another; Ulysses and Nishimi-wog—how’s 
that, Lord Jim? We husks can fight our way 
through the brush faster than they can.” 

“Right-o! In with you, boys, and let’s be 
off!” said Lord Jim, cheerfully. Bob ad¬ 
mired the rugged unconcern of his tones. 
Like all his breed the young Englishman was 
not given to any vain imaginings. He was 
totally indifferent to what the Naskapi might 
or might not do about their sacred White Bear 
or the Montaignais about Nagushwa. When 
they really did something His Lordship 
would meet it and go them one better. That 
seemed to be his attitude. It bucked Bob up 
a lot more than a sympathetic, “You’d better 
go in the canoe, too, Bob, being the one of us 
marked for special vengeance,” which the boy 
had been rather expecting. Of course he 
would have refused, but His Lordship’s rug¬ 
ged ignoring that there was any real danger 
was far better. It was the point of view of 
Ajax and Diomed too, Bob noted. The two 
161 



MEDICINE GOLD 


six-footers seemed entirely unworried and were 
prospecting for some sort of trail that would 
parallel the canoe on the river. 

“How far is it to the next portage, Nishimi- 
wog?” asked His Lordship, as they got into 
the canoe and the Indian seized her stern to 
shove off. 

“Oh, mebbe t’ree, four mile. You mak for 
high ground an’ keep dere. When you see 
mist in trees, dat is rapeed. Den coom down 
to de riviere again.” 

He shoved off and the paddles dipped in. 
The last Bob saw of them was the canoe flip¬ 
ping around the point of trees and out on to 
the rushing, angry, torrent of the swollen 
backwater, streaked with driftwood, boiling 
with sullen eddies. 

No one who has not actually fought his way 
through the primeval forest can have any con¬ 
ception of the lumpy and uneven and branch¬ 
breaking progress of it. The bowlders are 
there, the dead and moldering trunks of mon- 
archs that have fallen long ago, the hollows 
162 




THE WHITE BEAR 


left by uptorn roots, themselves long since 
rotted to dust. Further they are all covered 
with duff and thick moss, soft and treacherous, 
and crisscrossed with young growth, shade- 
killed, and fallen saplings, with the hare 
mighty bones of trees recently fallen. 
Through this wilderness Etienne led the way, 
ax in hand. The two husks drove on behind 
him, then His Lordship, and finally Bob, 
bringing up the rear. It was wild and fierce 
going down into illimitable ravines, across 
tangled bottoms and up giant slopes. They 
v/ere all gasping for breath before the high¬ 
lands were reached. Here were bare rocks 
again, with scrags up to their necks crowded 
in between the interstices. Etienne seemed 
to be looking for something, and finally he 
announced it with a grunt of relief. 

“Caribou lead—now we was go better!” he 
grinned, stopping at what looked like a muddy 
cowpath between the rocks and bushes. 
Along it they pushed in single file. It was 
infinitely preferable to straight scrags, and it 
163 



MEDICINE GOLD 


led in a general southwesterly direction, where¬ 
as all the moose and deer trails they had 
crossed had led down towards the river. 
After perhaps two miles of it Etienne paused 
and pointed down into the valley where the 
dark green forest followed the river’s course 
under frowning ridges opposite. 

“Dere was dem rapeeds,” he announced. 
“We go find-um moose trail.” 

Bob, who was last, gave a final look around 
over the open country before following the 
ethers down the slopes. He had looked back 
a good deal during the trip, keeping to him¬ 
self a haunting thought that they were be¬ 
ing followed by Naskapi scouts even now. 
Nothing that his eye could verify had occurred 
so far to confirm any such suspicions. Still 
the idea had persisted; why, he could not 
fathom. 

A tiny spruce growing in the cleft of a 
distant bowlder caught his eye as he scanned 
the rocky horizon. It was a long way off, 
but even then the thing seemed somehow un- 
164 



THE WHITE BEAR 


natural. Spruces did not get much of a 
foothold up here; if any tree survived it was 
more apt to be the twisted and gnarly Bank’s 
pine. Feigning to follow the others he 
ducked inside the scrags, to turn and watch 
it where he could himself peer concealed 
through fronds of green needles. For a 
moment he could scarce believe his eyes—for, 
while his back had been turned, the little 
spruce had vanished! He looked again, 
bending the pine twigs aside to see better. 
Yes, those two granite bowlders, one folding 
across in front of the other, that was the place. 
He was sure of it—unmistakable—the spruce 
grew, or had been held for a blind, right in 
the cleft. But it was gone now! 

“Gee!” he muttered. “Already!” 




CHAPTER VIII 


THE WARNING 

6 * T TOLD up a minute, fellows!” called 
B-1 Bob, hastening to rejoin his party. 

“We’re being followed. I saw 
a Naskapi scout back there.” 

“I know dat. Me see Injun, two, t’ree tam 
already,” said Etienne stolidly. 

“Why didn’t you report it?” asked Bob. 

Etienne shrugged his shoulders. “Of 
course, dey follow of it. You was see!” he 
exclaimed, ominously. 

“We ought to push right through and make 
the home camp to-night, eh, Lord Jim?” sug¬ 
gested Bob. “If they beat us there we’ll find 
all the tents and grub and trophies gone, I 
should think.” 

“No. No wan touch a camp or a cache in 
166 


THE WARNING 


dis co’ntree,” said Etienne. “Man lie, steal, 
keel—but no touch cache!” 

Bob had read somewhere of that great and 
inviolable law of the North, scrupulously ob¬ 
served by the Indians, and as scrupulously 
adopted by the whites. Its present practical 
illustration was to him another glimpse into 
the Indian mind. The custom had its roots, 
of course, in the fact that a cache was a man’s 
very life, but there was a deeper and more 
obscure psychology in it, the same feeling 
that made a white man abhor hitting a man 
below the belt or gassing him on the battle¬ 
field, although he would cheerfully hand him 
a knock-out to the jaw or kill him with a 
rifle. That same feeling it was that would 
let the Naskapi take a deadly revenge for 
the death of Wamokwa yet scrupulously 
leave the white man’s camp intact. No; 
there would be no hurry to beat anybody back 
to the base on Loon Lake. 

During Bob’s ruminations they had come 
down through the scrags, and presently the 
167 



MEDICINE GOLD 


whole party found themselves descending in 
single file down a faint game track to the 
river. A chatter of troubled waters came to 
their ears; then a rumble—a bellow. Then 
the whole party halted. Ahead were the 
husks and Etienne standing arms akimbo 
and looking out at a swift, deep torrent that 
eddied and roared over rocks nearly sub¬ 
merged. They had crossed no portage trail 
along the banks. 

“This is the rapids we ran coming down, 
fellows,” said Bob. “I don’t think there is 
a portage around them.” 

“We was have to track dat can-noe—every¬ 
body,” announced Etienne. “We go find 
Lord Jeem’s can-noe now.” 

He began picking his way through an 
atrocious tangle of bowlders and scrubs toward 
the foot of the rapids. A yell came from the 
bank below; then they saw His Lordship’s 
party seated around the canoe waiting for 
them. 

“Some trip!” grinned Ulysses, as they came 
168 



THE WARNING 


up. “It was like fighting a tide rip all the 
way up, Bob! John Charley finally had to 
cut a pole and shove us against the current, 
with the rest of us paddling in relays as we 
tired out.” 

“Here was de track line, Etienne,” said 
Nishimi-wog, getting up and handing him 
the coil of greasy bast rope that had already 
done such signal service in rescuing them 
from the ledge above the falls. He got into 
the canoe and shoved off with his pole. 

Instantly fierce and exciting action began. 
The canoe veered out like a wild thing. 
Nishimi-wog performed unheard-of prodi¬ 
gies of strength and activity. One by one, 
they all became engaged in the toil of haul¬ 
ing on the track line. Sometimes it went 
slack, when Nishimi-wog got into a backwater 
eddy where he could pole against the current, 
while the Trojans floundered and swarmed 
over rocks, climbed enormous trunks of water- 
thrown trees, or splashed valiantly through 
the icy water. There was no hope of keeping 
169 




MEDICINE GOLD 


dry now. By twos and threes they hauled 
and passed the track line to other groups col¬ 
lected at some vantage point further up, who 
in turn hauled the canoe up and up the rapids 
by sheer strength until relieved by the next 
relay. It was a delirious mile of scrambling 
absurd timber tangles along shore, of climb¬ 
ing out on mossy and slippery rocks, of 
splashes and tumbles and feats of hilarious 
daring. 

Altogether the Trojans could not remem¬ 
ber having had so good a time in their lives be¬ 
fore as in the tussles and excitements of track¬ 
ing that canoe up those swollen rapids. Ajax 
and Diomed were in their element. They 
joked and jeered, fell in, upset Nishimi-wog 
more than once with some elephantine haul on 
the line, and once they caught Ulysses alone 
out on a log, which they proceeded gently 
to rock from its shore end. Black suspicion, 
misgiving, terror were in that look which 
Ulysses shot shoreward. He stormed and 
threatened; then begged, pleaded, implored. 

170 



THE WARNING 


They went right on rolling, grinning at him 
fiendishly, until the Brains, with one last 
desperate leap, sprang airily from that log and 
floundered up to his thighs in wet rapids. It 
was high time that Ulysses was horsed for get¬ 
ting himself trapped, brains and all, by the 
Naskapi! Also the Crafty One’s contribution 
to the tracking thus far had been mainly 
yelling and passing the track line from dry and 
safe perches along the banks. 

At last came the second backwater and the 
canoe and shore parties interchanged. 

“We’ll meet you at that bluff at the foot of 
the big chute where we camped coming down, 
boys,” said His Lordship, leading his party up 
into the woods. Bob’s party repacked the wet 
canoe and started upstream. What a relief, 
after the long hours of toil, trail breaking and 
tracking! In spite of the increased volume of 
water there was a little current in this back¬ 
water and the canoe slipped along under 
sturdy paddles. An hour later the high bluff 
came in sight at the head of a placid reach, 
171 



MEDICINE GOLD 


and they landed and at once set to work kin¬ 
dling a huge conflagration. Wet clothes came 
off and dry ones were fished out of the packs 
and put on. The canoe and tarp shelter went 
up, lazily, leisurely. Etienne set about bak¬ 
ing a mountain of biscuits and boiling ponder¬ 
ous mulligan. 

It was sunset when stick breaking and 
voices sounded in the timber above them, and 
presently Nishimi-wog and His Lordship’s 
party came into camp. They changed into 
dry clothes weary and silent. 

The weird flashes of the northern lights were 
shimmering in the sky by the time supper was 
over and the tired party was lolling in com¬ 
fortable weariness on the needle banks. An 
open gap of the river reach stretched out be¬ 
fore them to the north. The long twilight had 
almost gone. As Bob watched, a lone woolly 
cloud sailed slowly across the gap, detaching it¬ 
self little by little from the cliffs and spruce 
spires on the left wall of the ravine and finally 
framing itself in the cleft, but the cloud was so 
172 



THE WARNING 


far distant as to seem almost some mirage of 
the North. As Bob watched the rays of the 
northern lights playing over it, the cloud 
slowly changed its shape. A sort of nose grew 
out from its eastern end. It elongated until 
a long furry head and neck jutted out from the 
pear-shaped mass behind it, while over it flick¬ 
ered and played the unearthly green and violet 
rays of the Borealis. Then a dent began to 
form on the under side of the body. It grew, 
until distinct but formless legs gave the cloud 
a weird and tattered but unmistakable shape. 

“Ugh!—Wamokwa, de White Bear of de 
Naskapi!” grunted Nishimi-wog, who lay be¬ 
side Bob watching it. “Him talk!” 

Bob shivered uneasily. Nature played queer 
pranks up here! 

“I see it, too, John Charley,” he said. 
“Weird thing, isn’t it? What do you make of 
it?” he asked curiously, to get the Indian’s 
point of view. 

“De Bear Ghos\ heem was hungry, dat sign 
say. De spirits talk to us by de light of Nada 
173 



MEDICINE GOLD 


(the Borealis). De Naskapi, dey see heem, 
sure, mebbe. Dey keel! He hongry—so dey 
feed heem de ghosts of white mans!” 

The Indian mind! Bob realized how little 
he understood it. The cocksure judg¬ 
ment of sportsmen and travelers had pro¬ 
nounced the Indian “childish,” but this one 
episode of the White Bear was showing Bob 
far otherwise. The Indian mind was at once 
mysterious and resplendent, subtle with the 
subtlety of the Orient, bold with the courage 
of the hardiest Spartan. Whatever form the 
retribution of the Naskapi would take, it 
would be rather of an oriental splendor and 
of a finality that only Asia would delight in. 
There would be nothing small or pretty about 
it! 

They all realized that when their canoe 
brought them back in two relays across Loon 
Lake next morning and they found everything 
untouched. Not the smallest article had been 
stolen. The tents and tackle were unharmed, 
the very meat of moose, deer and caribou 
174 



THE WARNING 


still lay wrapped, heavily salted, in the skins 
brought to camp. But both Montaignais and 
Naskapi had been there, as Nishimi-wog 
pointed out by their moccasin prints. If so, 
it must have been since the thunderstorm, for 
these occasional tracks were made in fresh 
duff, clean washed and laid by the rain. 

Bob found the reactions of the party to that 
discovery very interesting to study. His 
Lordship merely said, “Hm!” and went his 
way, attending to getting the trophy of Old 
Plow-Handles ready for the taxidermist. 
Etienne, with the boy Antoine now following 
him about like a shadow, shrugged his heavy 
shoulders and set stolidly to work cutting all 
their meat into long strips for jerking. The 
two husks, Ajax and Diomed, dove with rap¬ 
turous grunts for their sleeping bags and ad¬ 
journed sine die until slept up. Patroclus 
and Bob helped Nishimi-wog build the jerky 
frame, cutting for it green balsam boughs 
which would not burn. Ulysses, occupied ex¬ 
clusively with externals, endeavored to track 
175 



MEDICINE GOLD 


up the fresh moccasin trails and so build up a 
theory, the pieces of which he would try to fit 
together like a Chinese puzzle. 

A day of rest and inaction passed in camp. 
At night the red reflection of a great fire to 
the north glowed over the horizon under the 
beams of the aurora. It might be a combined 
council fire of the Naskapi and Montaignais; 
it might be some wooded section burning, for, 
with the exception of that brief thnuderstorm, 
no rain at all had fallen during their entire 
stay. But it was there, ominous and enig¬ 
matical, for two nights. Then there was noth¬ 
ing in the north but the empty sky, a velvet 
darkness, set with the constellations that re¬ 
volve around the pole, and shot with the 
ghostly fingers of the northern lights. 

Nearly half a ton of meat hung in smoking 
and shriveling strips from the long pole frames 
of the jerky fire. When dry and hard as so 
many sticks of wood they would be done, and 
would then weigh perhaps three hundred 
pounds. Etienne and Antoine, and Nishimi- 
176 



THE WARNING 


wog too, when not out trout fishing with His 
Lordship or one of the boys, tended the birch 
fire under the jerky frame assiduously, for 
this plunder was part of the guides’ reward for 
the trip and would furnish them with their 
winter meat. 

On the third day the restless Trojans began 
to hunt again, for time was flying and their 
trip would soon be up. Ulysses brought 
in a small black bear, ranging far and wide for 
him without ever seeing a sign of an Indian. 
It decided Patroclus that it was high time for 
him, too, to get a game head and he announced 
his purpose that night. 

“Fellows, if you-all can spare me Nishimi- 
wog, I’m going after a woodland caribou to¬ 
morrow. It’s getting late, now, for moose call¬ 
ing, but John Charley says the caribou ought 
to be moving by this time. Me for the still¬ 
hunting game.” 

“Go to it, Pat!” encouraged Bob. “Caribou 
hunting none of us has tried yet. Good luck 
to you!” 


177 



MEDICINE GOLD 


“How about you. Bob?” came back Patro¬ 
clus. “Aren’t you going to take anything 
back to show ’em at Colquitt’s?” 

“No—the White Bear was trophy enough 
for me—more than enough!” replied Bob, 
moodily. The thing still weighed heavily on 
his spirits, Patroclus saw, so he did not press 
him further. 

Before dawn he and Nishimi-wog set out 
in their canoe across the lake, bound for a dis¬ 
tant backwater of which Nishimi-wog knew 
over on the west shore. 

“De caribou, heem was travel. Travel all 
tarn,” said Nishimi-wog, by way of initiating 
Patroclus into the mysteries of this kind of 
hunting. “You climb beeg dead tree. Look 
out. Mooch co’ntree. You see-um stag, 
which way he come, den get down an’ roon lak 
everything.” 

“I should think he’d see you first and go 
somewhere else, wouldn’t he?” asked Patro¬ 
clus. 

“He no ’fred, till he strike de man-smell; 

178 



THE WARNING 


den he go lak de wind!” chuckled the Indian. 

The canoe was entering the stream which 
flowed out of the backwater by the time they 
had discussed all the tricks and stratagems of 
the woodland caribou. The Indian chose a 
down tree where the canoe could be hauled up 
on the muskeg and they could get a start 
across the marsh to the high barren grounds 
that surrounded it. Once up there Patroclus 
swarmed up a tall dead tree, with his binocu¬ 
lars slung about his neck. A great forest fire 
had swept through here in some forgotten time, 
and the whole country was filled with dead 
trees, most of them prone and wind-thrown, 
some still standing, while up through the wind¬ 
falls grew bushy young white spruce reveling 
in the sunlight and open space. The bare bones 
of the continent dotted the landscape—great 
granite rocks rounded by glacial action which 
jutted out of the green of the scrags. So 
large and white were they that Patroclus was 
continually training his glasses on them, his 
heart heating fast with the anticipation of 
179 




MEDICINE GOLD 


their proving to be caribou standing still. 

But he soon came to realize that caribou 
never stand still. They plod along, wander¬ 
ing about the barrens, nipping up a mouthful 
of fodder and chewing it as they go. Far off, 
three such moving white spots finally rewarded 
his search, and he crammed the glasses to his 
eyes, training them on the band avidly. The 
leader was a fine buck, with long curved ant¬ 
lers and the curious brow-plates jutting out 
over the forehead. 

“Caribou, John!” he called down, sliding 
hastily down out of the tree. 

“W’ich way was de lead?” asked Nishimi- 
wog excitedly. 

Patroclus realized by that that the caribou 
always travel on “leads” or cowpaths made 
by themselves and that it was important to 
watch them awhile to get the general direction 
of the lead. 

“Across us, I think, beyond that spruce 
thicket.” 

John Charley set off at a run toward it. It 
180 



THE WARNING 


was essential to reach it first and fire from there 
as the band passed. Into it they dashed after 
a short run. Scrags, thick and exasperating, 
but Pat drove his way fiercely through after 
the squirming back of the Indian. Then an 
oustretched hand stopped him. He came up 
and peered over John Charley’s shoulder. The 
caribou were crossing right in front of them, 
not a hundred yards off over the tumbled 
bowlder and muskeg. Patroclus whipped up 
his rifle, aimed a foot ahead of the buck and 
fired. The animal flinched. 

“You was hit heem! Good boy!” grunted 
J ohn Charley, his wild eyes gleaming with the 
lust of the chase.” Now roon!” 

The two cows had scattered wildly at the 
shot but the buck still wandered on haltingly, 
uncertainly. He had not slackened his pace 
perceptibly and was getting out of range. It 
seemed odd to Patroclus that they could run 
after him in plain sight, but such is the caribou 
nature. “Shoot, moos be!” barked Nishimi- 
wog. 


181 




MEDICINE GOLD 


Pat went down on one knee and fired 
again. The buck was now galloping wildly, 
some vagrant wind having borne their scent 
to him. It was that which had made the 
Indian bid him shoot quick. The bullet 
smacked sharply, wheeling the caribou around, 
and he dashed out of sight into another dense 
thicket of Bank’s pine. 

“Now we was wait,” announced Nishimi- 
wog, squatting down and lighting a vile and 
ancient corncob pipe. Pat was all for rush¬ 
ing in and finishing it, then and there, but the 
caribou would run miles, wounded as he was, 
John Charley explained with force. After 
fifteen minutes he rose again. 

“He was coom dead in dere,” said the 
Indian confidently. 

Patroclus, unconvinced, searched the thicket, 
but found nothing in it. Out on the north 
side of it was a bog of muskeg, across which 
tracks showed that the stag had plowed. 
There were numerous other prints there too, so 
that his were soon lost. But the Indian, 
182 



THE WARNING 


quartering the ground like a dog, found here 
and there a trace of blood that led them on. 
The caribou had made for a clump of spruce 
across the muskeg. Beyond that was rocky 
barren and down trees, and a smear of blood 
on the trunk of one of them told where he had 
crossed. 

They were floundering and climbing through 
this, in scrags up to their necks, when suddenly 
the stag got up again, ahead of them, and 
again Patroclus’ rifle cracked. This time he 
went down to stay! 

“Wheel He’s mine!” whooped Patroclus, 
running forward. “Still-hunting for mine! 
I’d rather have that caribou than all the moose 
in Quebec!” 

John Charley grinned appreciatively and 
they both started in at once skinning him out. 
All day they worked, stopping only at noon to 
boil the kettle. It was late afternoon when 
both staggered across the barrens loaded down 
wth trophies and all the meat that could be 
carried. 


183 




MEDICINE GOLD 


“Caribou meat, heem mak fine jerky!” de¬ 
clared John Charley, happily. “I was coom 
back here to-morrow an’ breeng de rest of 
heem.” 

They loaded the canoe and set out for camp. 
It was dark when she ran ashore at the old 
landing and the Trojans were already at 
supper. 

That night Bob and Ulysses went on the 
first watch together, for they had not dared, 
even yet, to relax their nightly vigil. Nothing 
happened to awaken any suspicion. The 
woods brooded in their usual stillness, while 
overhead the northern lights flickered 
in a play that made them almost listen 
for some inaudible sound coming from 
them. 

And then, about midnight, there came an 
owl. He was a barred owl, as his lusty 
Hoo-hoo — wha-hoo-hoo! — hoo-hoo-wha! pro¬ 
claimed. At first the youths did not pay 
much attention to him. Then Ulysses drifted 
over to where Bob sat listening. 

184 



THE WARNING 


“Say, Bob,” he whispered, “that fellow 
isn’t timing right! I’ve timed them often, 
down South, and they always hoot nearly on 
the minute. And he seems to he flying all 
over the lot, judging from the different places 
from which the hoots come.” 

“Try an answer,” suggested Bob, “that 
always shuts him up, for no man can imitate 
him so as to deceive the beggar.” 

Ulysses crept off into the forest. Pres¬ 
ently, in answer to the owl, a ghostly hoot 
floated out into the night. Even Bob had to 
smile at the palpable imitation! 

“Pretty good, for old Brains—but, if I 
was an owl!” laughed Bob to himself. Then 
he listened eagerly, for in answer there came 
a single derisive chuckle from somewhere out 
in the woods! 

Presently Ulysses came floating back, in 
the tenuous silence that ensued. “Did you 
hear that!” he whispered, breathlessly. 

“Sure! Naskapi or Montaignais, all right! 
Thev’re out there,” came back Bob. “We’ll 
185 



MEDICINE GOLD 


have doings to-night. I’ll wake up Nishimi- 
wo g.” 

He was about to do so when they both halt¬ 
ed dead still in their tracks. From some¬ 
where in the woods there rang out the un¬ 
mistakable twang of a bow. It was followed, 
presently, by the faint hiss of the arrow as it 
dropped vertically before their eyes and stuck 
quivering in the duff near the red embers of 
the fire. 

They both looked at it in silence. Then Bob 
stepped forward and pulled it out, for a roll 
of birch bark was tightly wrapped around its 
shaft. 

“A message, ’Lyss! Shall we fire a shot 
in answer ?” 

“No, what’s the use! Open it,” urged 
iUlysses, eagerly. 

Bob cut it off with his hunting knife. On 
the birchbark was written a line of those queer 
sign-writing characters used all over the North 
which were taught the Crees nearly a century 
ago by the missionaries. By them an Indian 
186 



THE WARNING 


can learn to read and write his own language 
in one day’s study—a sardonic comment on 
our own alphabet, which takes years to learn 
and use. The western and eastern Cree and 
the Naskapi all use it. The characters looked 
like this: 

^dl> . d C A ,-A.V,dn,'A 

The youths could make nothing of it, so Bob 
waked up Nishimi-wog to translate it. 

“Ugh! Heem was in English!” exclaimed 
the Indian, after he had rubbed the sleep out 
of his eyes and read it over. “Dat writin’ was 
say: ‘White man, get out! Wamokwa hungry!’ 
Ugh! De Naskapi was go keel all of it, 
I t’ink me!” he remarked, ominously. 




CHAPTER IX 


LADDER PORTAGE 

44 Y SAY, ye know!” grinned His Lord- 
I ship, as Bob and Patroclus sought him 
^ out to learn his decision on the arrow 
that had fallen into camp. “Fawncy the beg¬ 
gars having the nerve to tell us to move on! I 
was going to, directly, but—my word!” For a 
time he hesitated. The flip of a coin would 
have decided him. The sporting chance of a 
fight if they remained inclined him to the latter 
course, but it was the trout of the Rocher that 
decided him. 

“Etienne tells me they fight much harder 
in that swift water than in this beastly lake,” 
he mused. 

Bob thought of that other Englishman who 
had given up Alaska because the salmon 
fchere did not rise to a fly, and grinned. 

188 


LADDER PORTAGE 


“Lak dat!—I show you!” put in Etienne, 
holding his hands wide apart. He was ach¬ 
ing to get down to St. Cesare himself and to 
be rid of Nagushwa in the safe vaults of the 
church. Bob knew, but nothing of this had he 
ever hinted. 

“Really? My word, we must try the dry 
fly with them! Rather!” ejaculated Lord 
Jim, enthusiastically. “We strike the tents 
first thing to-morrow, boys!” he announced. 

Bob drew a big breath of relief. Unless 
something happened that night, they would 
be safely on their way. Early next morning 
the tents came down, the packs were made 
up and stowed in the canoes, the antlers and 
skins lashed in lengthwise where they would 
not catch on passing branches, and the dried 
meat was put into the old potato sack, now 
almost empty. The fleet of canoes set out 
along the east shore and presently ran into 
swift water, where the Rocher flowed out on 
its crooked way down to the St. Lawrence. 
Etienne sang with happiness. At last they 
189 



MEDICINE GOLD 


were going on to St. Cesare where the infernal 
Nagushwa could be got rid of! 

The Rocher was still slightly swollen as a 
result of the cloud-burst, and the first white 
water showed itself a safe rapids to shoot. 
Down it the fleet wallowed, Ajax and Diomed, 
to whom running rapids was new, shouting 
and yelling with excitement. Below that 
was a long backwater, with the bends looping 
and turning through a silent wilderness of 
black spruce spires and the placid waters a 
mirror of the green banks. Then came the 
heavy thunder of troubled waters ahead and 
Etienne ran the canoe ashore at a blazed tree, 
motioning to them to follow vigorously. 

“Chute de quarante pieds! —Rapeed— 
forty-foot drop!” he yelled at them warningly, 
for His Lordship was heading his canoe 
right for it, seeking new waters to conquer. 

Bob thought of unlimbering his rifle from 
its case as Etienne started up the silent trail 
with the birchbark over his head, Antoine 
shouldering the tail of it resting on a sweater 
190 



LADDER PORTAGE 


and a pair of socks. He was still uncon¬ 
vinced that they were safe. Here, in the un¬ 
protected solitudes of the portage trail, where 
the whole party would be strung out and labor¬ 
ing, would be just the place the Indians 
would choose to make that pounce which 
would recover them the sinister Medicine 
Gold—Nagushwa. But he abandoned the 
idea as soon as thought of. Childish! No; 
that way might suit the Montaignais but it 
was not the way of the Naskapi—not to 
avenge their Medicine Bear! It would be 
something infinitely more terrible, something 
from which there would be no escape, some¬ 
thing spectacular and commensurate with the 
gorgeous Indian ideas of a fitting retribution. 
Bob contented himself with shouldering his 
pack and heaving up atop of it a heavy side¬ 
opening duffel bag loaded with food. 

“Dees was de Lynk Portage,” called back 
Etienne from under the hollow bulk of his 
canoe as he followed along. “I show you 
trout, pooty soon—lak dat!” He spread 
191 



MEDICINE GOLD 


his hands three feet apart. The ruling pas¬ 
sion—fish and game—was still uppermost in 
the simple habitant's mind, Bob noted. Na- 
gushwa did not worry him much, not in all this 
crowd of gentlemen voyageurs. 

Through the tree trunks he could see the 
river hurtling and flashing by below them in 
the sunlight. One glimpse through an open 
vista cured Bob of the vaguest impulse to run 
those rapids! The river bellowed over a 
series of ledges, in one place leaping ten feet 
sheer and falling with a hollow thunder into 
a foaming pool. Feet thudded behind him in 
the soft duff, and voices and laughter came 
through the forest—to rise to howls of de¬ 
rision as Bob looked back and saw Ulysses 
with his tump strap slipped down on to his 
Adam’s apple and nearly choking him, while 
Ajax, with his canoe tilted up like a hat, was 
laughing at him in ungodly glee. The light¬ 
hearted Trojans were getting all the fun pos¬ 
sible out of this portage and making nothing 
of its labors. Bob thought of that first 
192 



LADDER PORTAGE 


weary carry of theirs over from the Ouiat- 
chouan and grinned. 

At the foot of the trail they came upon the 
lower pool, a perfect trout paradise of swirl¬ 
ing waters. His Lordship had already got 
out his rod and the rest went for theirs with 
trembling fingers. Etienne and Nishimi- 
wog sat and grinned beatific grins at them all. 
Here would be trout that were trout I 

“Dat long!” said Etienne, encouragingly, 
making significant pantomimes. It was won¬ 
derful water, and there was lots of room for 
amateurish backcasts. Soon five rods were 
going, while the guides ducked for cover and 
Bob put up a free hand to protect his ear 
from Ajax’s flies. 

Yes, it was wonderful water, they all 
agreed—but not a trout rose! Even Etienne 
and Nishimi-wog looked at each other as¬ 
tounded at that. Etienne borrowed a rod 
and tried his prettiest casting himself. No 
go! His Lordship and ’Ulysses soon sat 
down on a roll of blankets to consider this 
193 



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palpable nature-faking on the part of the 
trout. 

“My word!—To have come three thousand 
miles for this!” ejaculated Lord Jim dis¬ 
gustedly. “What’s the matter, Etienne?” 

The guide shrugged his shoulders puzzled 
and looked at Nishimi-wog. The Indian 
grinned. He didn’t want to say it, but that 
no self-respecting trout would rise to any such 
a stream-whacking onslaught seemed to be 
his thought. 

“I’ve got it!” yelled Ulysses slapping his 
leg. “The trout aren’t rising because we’re 
fishing where there aren’t any!” 

“Marvelous, altogether!” retorted His 
Lordship sarcastically. “Your idea, then, 
is to take a census of the entire Rocher River 
and then fish where the density of population 
is greatest, eh? Where do you propose to 
begin?” 

“In the rapids, of course!” came back 
Ulysses. “It’s high water, see? The trout 
have moved up, so as to get all the hugs that 
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come down before they get a chance to drown 
in the falls. Inductive logic, hey?” There 
was triumph in his tones, conviction, the sure 
mental processes of reasoning from cause to 
effect. “C’mon, fellows!” he yelled back 
eagerly, starting off up the trail himself. 

The two husks laughed, openly derisive, 
and His Lordship began putting away his 
rod. As an English sportsman his code for¬ 
bade him to fish unless there was a rise that 
you could, see! But Bob followed Ulysses; 
there might be something in that theory. 

They found the nearest approach to the 
rapids to be above that ten-foot drop, where 
a blizzard had once sat down on the forest 
and left behind it a nest of wind-thrown trees. 
A jumble of huge dead trunks filled the 
forest, and, with a rod and three dangling flies, 
all looking for trouble, it was diverting to 
navigate through them. But Ulysses ran out 
along a bare straight trunk—and then stood 
still and pranced, beckoning excitedly to Bob 
to come out. Below him showed a silent pool, 
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with a little private waterfall of its own, and 
down into it he lowered his flies. 

“Look at them, man—only look at the mon¬ 
sters!” he whispered ecstatically. “Oh, boy! 
I shall settle down here for a green old age!” 

His flies bobbed over the water and there 
was a turmoil down below as three at once 
rose and leaped out of water, with two hook¬ 
ing themselves. Down went the protesting 
rod, bowed and sprung again and again, and 
then a third trout took the remaining hook. 

“Say, man—this is simply a shame! Let 
me at ’em!” gurgled Bob. He had to lower 
himself like a chimpanzee to get at those fel¬ 
lows with the landing net. A sudden scoop, 
and it came up with two savage spotted fon- 
tanalis flopping madly in it and the third 
dangling outside. They held their breaths 
as the precious burden was raised and Ulysses 
made a snatch at the one in mid-air, which 
saved him. 

“A triple!” he whooped, beginning to creel 
them. Bob grabbed up his own rod and ran 
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out farther on the trunk. With a daring 
leap he had landed on a flat ledge of granite, 
a rock glaring in the sun with the whole river 
foaming past, its surface flicked with tossing 
wavelets, its depths fumed like boiling 
milk. Out of it little yellowbellies leaped 
for Bob’s flies in mid-air. His rod bent in a 
fine whipping arc and more weight added 
itself as a second trout got the tail fly. He 
yelled for the landing net. These furious 
little demons of the rapids were strong and 
husky, and they had a terrific current to aid 
them! Ulysses came leaping out with land¬ 
ing net and rod in hand; came to help land 
Bob’s trout—stayed to forget his own pool 
entirely and surrender to the fascination of 
such trout fishing as only once in a lifetime 
the red gods give! 

An hour later Patroclus joined them. He 
came to chasten and expostulate over their 
keeping the whole party waiting. They 
handed him a rod without a word—and Pat¬ 
roclus remained, a maniac, shouting with the 
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joys of battle, whooping triumphantly in yells 
that were lost in the din of waters—lost, ut¬ 
terly lost to all sense of time and duty! 

And then came His Lordship, angry of 
countenance, filled with reproaches quite as 
just and as logical as those of Patroclus. 
They pressed a rod into His Lordship’s hands 
—and the trout did the rest! A sudden in¬ 
visible tug—a savage strike—a chattering reel 
—a rod that whipped and bowed like a mad 
thing, and His Lordship became forthwith 
a capering and gibbering lunatic. Trout 
struck and tore out the hook in that rushing 
torrent; trout leaped and caught the dropper 
fly; other trout made off with the tail hackle 
on the same cast; trout snagged leaders over 
rock ledges and hung up flies in unknown 
crevices in the rocks—and still they fished! 

Two hours later His Lordship had to be 
forcibly led away from there, for it was sun¬ 
set and John Charley Nishimi-wog stood 
beckoning to them imperatively from the 
windfall. It was really time to go! To this 
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day the Trojans speak of that trout fishing of 
Lynx Rapids in awed whispers! 

When they reached the lower pool two 
canoes had already gone on down. Bob and 
Ulysses and Patroclus didn’t care. It had 
been a perfect day—and in their mind’s eye 
two shirt tails were due to come out and be 
cut off once they could lay hands on those 
abandoned skeptics—Ajax and Diomed. 

Three miles of rapids lay before them. 
The banks shot by; water boiled around the 
gunwales and slapped over the hows; rocks 
were grazed, and for one hilarious instant His 
Lordship hung up on a bowlder and threatened 
to wreck the whole expedition—but not a 
whoop cared they! Those trout! Bob looked 
back at Patroclus with happy, shining eyes. 
That was a day! 

Then came a long backwater, with paddles 
dipping silently under a sky deep purple in 
the gloaming. At the head of the reach a 
ruddy fire glowed, and the ghostly shapes of 
the tents showed redly in the light of multi- 
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tudinous sparks streaming up. They landed. 
We draw a curtain over that scene when those 
trout were thrown out on the bank and the 
Trojans started for Ajax and Diomed, shout¬ 
ing battle cries! 

The next day was one long campaign of 
mixed cruising. They shot some nasty water; 
they ran into wide rippling shallows and had 
to get out and wade, dragging the canoes by 
their tracking lines; they portaged around 
precipices and cut through the forest with 
axes to drag the canoes around some new and 
impassable obstruction that the river had re¬ 
cently tumbled into its lap. Lord Jim lost 
his pipe; that is, he thought he had lost it, but 
he might have swallowed it, he admitted, in 
the tense excitement of deciding whether to 
go around a certain bowlder or through it. 

They got into a gorge, with high cliffs 
towering above them a hundred and fifty feet 
on both sides. Here the water boiled and 
swirled sullenly as the canoes shot through it 
mile after mile. The rods were gotten out, 
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for the trout were there, announcing their 
presence by smashes of foam that brought yells 
of delight from the leading canoes. Fishing 
in this giant’s bathtub was an exasperating 
experience. There was no time to do it 
properly; no time for a decent cast, even. If 
a trout missed the fly he had to be abandoned, 
for the next whip would land fifty feet further 
downstream. And those that were hooked, 
snarled up the fleet of canoes inextricably. 
The current bore them all along, willy-nilly, 
but the trout went where they pleased, under 
canoes, around the other man’s line, in behind 
rocks, where there was no alternative but to 
drag them out by force majeur or to tear out 
the hook. There was much hilarity and two 
broken rods before the end of that gorge was 
reached. 

Etienne ran the leading canoe ashore with 
an unusual taciturnity—for him. He was 
saving the most spectacular feature of this 
trip and saying nothing at all about it. He 
wanted them to burst upon it suddenly; to 
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have it take them off their feet with its ap¬ 
palling immensity, its almost fabulous test of 
a man’s courage. 

And it did! All they saw at first was a 
terrific, heart-breaking portage up the walls 
of that gorge, along a path that zigzagged up 
and up, through rock ledges, with fearful falls 
for the man who was clumsy with his canoe, 
and bush tangles that were a snare and a de¬ 
lusion for the man burdened with a pack 
twice as big as himself. At its top they stood 
on a rocky table-land, sweating, mopping 
brows, and cursing cheerfully. Beyond to the 
south stretched blue distance, a magnificent 
panorama of the Laurentian country below. 

Then a simultaneous howl of protest went 
up, as Etienne led the way over to the ledge 
of that rock. 

“Voila, de Ladder Portage, M’sieus!” he 
grinned, waving his hands invitingly down at 
the supreme feature of his show. 

They looked down; and every one felt him¬ 
self grabbing desperately at the last remnants 
202 



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of his courage which seemed oozing out 
rapidly through his boots! For, below them, 
leading down, was a great bare tree trunk, 
notched with steps. Down over empty 
nothingness it went, in a steep slant, down, 
down, nearly a hundred feet into a green forest 
below, out of which the tallest spruce spires 
rose up so that they could look down on their 
tops! 

“My word—do we go down that thing!” 
gasped His Lordship. “Right, boys! It 
isn’t allowed the Ruling Clauss to—funk, ye 
know,” his voice fairly quavered. 

They looked at him unhappily. Still it had 
to be done. Etienne grunted energetically 
and picked up the long birchbark. He swung 
it over his head with a powerful heave and 
young Antoine grasped the tail of it and set 
it on his slender shoulder. Over the top of 
the trunk Etienne put down a steady foot 
into the first notch. The canoe dipped in 
sudden jerks as he descended, until it rose up 
at a great slant paralleling the trunk. Then 
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Antoine stepped down into the first notch. 
Bob watched his boyish face curiously. 
There was nothing written there but care for 
his own and his father’s footsteps. The 
deadly void below did not exist for him. 

“Doucement (carefully) la has!” growled 
up Etienne’s voice from under the canoe. 
They all held their breath as it slowly went 
down. So that was the way it was done, eh? 
Bob reasoned that it was safe enough, if one 
went steady and sure and there were no wind, 
but what his own legs would do when his turn 
came he could not conjecture. 

Nishimi-wog and His Lordship followed 
next. They stopped several times on the 
trunk, and joking remarks came from Lord 
Jim as he kicked at several rotten log steps 
to make sure they were safe. But they 
passed down safely. The rugged indiffer¬ 
ence of the English! thought Bob, as he re¬ 
flected on his own high-strung race and 
wondered how the fiery soul of Patroclus 
would take this ordeal. He would overdo it, 
204 



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probably, and precipitate them both through 
too much courage. 

Ajax and Diomed came next. They went 
at it the way they did everything—bullheaded. 
Scornful growls, biting sarcasms, a dis¬ 
dainful and hilarious descent they made, 
ending in a disgraceful riot as Ajax at¬ 
tempted to trot down the last notches and so 
pulled the cursing Diomed, the canoe and all, 
down on him in one glorious crash. 

Bob looked out once more over the pano¬ 
rama of life before picking up their canoe. 
Below him lay the Montagnais country, green, 
endless, glinting here and there with the 
silver thread of the Rocher. Beyond a dis¬ 
tant line of ridges lay civilization, St. Cesare, 
white people, a release from a worry that was 
to him far greater and more overshadowing 
than even the hazard of this Ladder Portage. 
Then he hitched his belt and turned to the 
canoe, biting his lip. 

“Well—up with her, Pat!” He gritted 
his teeth and looked at Patroclus, to note with 
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misgivings, that well-known flare in his eyes 
that told him his slender chum was all lit up, 
and more than on his toes for this adventure. 
Between them they propped the canoe up in 
a slant and Bob got under and rested its for¬ 
ward gunwales on his shoulders. The tough 
wood bit cruelly, but he was rather glad of it 
and did not put on a protecting wad of socks. 
He felt the tail of the canoe go up as Pa- 
troclus raised it on his shoulder, and then he 
put his foot over gingerly into the first notch 
of the Ladder trunk. The view below sick¬ 
ened him. Down stretched the vast bare 
bulk of the tree trunk. His eyes fastened 
themselves steadily on the next notch, but be¬ 
low it and around it the empty void seemed 
swimming, wavering, out of focus, as were the 
green trees far under him. 

The reassuring steadiness of Patroclus at 
the other end stiffened him somewhat and he 
stepped down into the next notch. Another 
one; and then still another. The friendly 
side of the cliff seemed walking backward 
206 



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from him, now. He was alone, all alone, out 
in a hideous emptiness, with nothing but his 
own nerve to save him from death. 

“Higher, Pat!” he gasped, hoarsely, for the 
canoe seemed touching the cliff ledge above. 
The canoe rose obediently. It continued to 
rise, for Patroclus himself was now approach¬ 
ing the brink. Bob felt its weight trying to 
shove him irresistibly, brutally, head foremost 
downward, and he braced back against it in 
wild fright. 

“Hold up your end, Pat, for heaven’s sake!” 
he cried hoarsely; then stepped down a notch 
and at once the pressure was relieved. 

“Steady, old-timer!—Together, now!” rang 
out Patroclus’ silver voice. They went 
down a few notches more. Bob stopped. 
There was an utter silence below, for no one 
had dared call up a word of encouragement. 
Bob’s knees began shaking and trembling 
under him. He was furious at them; he was 
not cowardly, but these legs undoubtedly 
were! He fought them breathing heavily, 
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prodding at them with the scornful sarcasm 
of his will. 

“C’mon—le’s go!” came Patroclus’ voice 
impatiently. Bob forced himself on down. 
Ha! That went better! The long series of 
steps stretched out below; all you had to do 
was to forget the rest of it and just plant one 
foot after another right in the notch! Pat- 
roclus kept calling out “Hep! Hep! Hep!” 
and that got them in unison. The thing soon 
became mechanical. Victory! By the time 
the last steps were reached Bob was as cool 
as any of them. They dropped the canoe and 
he rushed to grab Pat’s hand. The slender 
youth was now mopping his face rapidly and 
the perspiration was pouring down it. He 
had gone white, and as Bob gripped his hand 
he leaned against him, weak, tottering. 

Bob put his arm around him supportingly. 
“Some team, we are, old pal!” he whispered. 
“Better now? You’ll be all right in a 
minute!” Pat’s weight leaned on him heavily. 
The reaction to his high-strung nature had 
208 



LADDER PORTAGE 


come, now that the danger was over and sur¬ 
mounted—yet his was the soaring soul that 
kept the path for them both, up there! 

Both were relieved by the sketch that was 
now going on up on the trunk. Ulysses was 
the last one left. He had been industriously 
lowering packs by a tracking rope and now it 
was his turn to come down. Old Brains was 
not taking any chances! He came down 
backward, like a monkey, on all fours, his feet 
feeling for the notches below as the Trojans 
jeered and yelled up unfeeling comments. 
Once or twice the Brains would sit down al¬ 
together, with arms and legs hugging the 
trunk, when some gust of fear would render 
him temporarily helpless. They all laughed 
till they cried, and a dozen hands tore out his 
shirt when Ulysses arrived in their midst once 
more. It was about time, for he had, so far, 
escaped that ignominious ceremony. 

“Camp site a leetle way down de back¬ 
water,chirped Etienne, dragging his canoe 
to a muddy landing. “You was lak de Lad- 
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der Portage, M’sieus?” he asked innocently. 

“Simply rippin’, dear chap!” grinned His 
Lordship. “Topping, y’ know! But not for 
my regular daily fare, though! Rather not!” 

“I was mak, Tree, four, tarn every season, 
me,” laughed Etienne. “Hey, Nishimi-wog?” 

The Indian grinned satuminely. 

The fleet started on again, and after about 
a mile came to a little pine grove with a rivu¬ 
let and a spring flowing out into the Rocher 
from one side of it. The place soon hummed 
with happy voices and the busy strokes of axes. 
Tents went up; a log fire was built; big pans 
of biscuits started rising in a reflector baker 
set before a high-flaming fire of its own, with 
a straight back wall of small logs. 

And, in the midst of this carefree chatter, 
there came a deep sullen boom—a crash that 
reverberated through the forest and was ech¬ 
oed from the cliffs that walled in the river! 

“Hein? Wat was dat?” asked Etienne, 
cocking his ear. 

“Tree falling somewhere,” replied Ajax 
210 



LADDER PORTAGE 


indifferently and went on driving tent pegs. 

But Etienne was not reassured. He went 
down to the landing and shoved off upstream 
in the canoe. 

After a time they heard his swift paddle 
strokes coming hack. There was so much 
urgency in them that every one ran down to 
the landing inquiringly. The guide’s eyes 
were fairly popping out of his head as the 
canoe shot at full speed toward them. 

“Bah gosh, M’sieus!—Mooch bad! De 
Naskapi was t’row down de Ladder Portage!” 
he gasped out. “We was trapped, M’sieus!” 

“Ugh!” grunted John Charley Nishimi- 
wog, shaking his head solemnly, “now de 
Naskapi, was coom revenge de White Bear— 
You was see!” 



CHAPTER X 


RETRIBUTION 

1C 7 HAT ^ 0U ma ^ e 

% / \/ Etienne ?” asked Bob, anxiously, 
^ * when the French Canadian had 

landed and quieted down enough to make his 
speech intelligible and coherent. 

“Heem was a trap,” declared Etienne 
ominously. He stretched out a burly arm 
down the river. “Grand Serve —250 pied 
chute a pie!” he cried, relapsing into French 
in his excitement. 

The Trojans looked to His Lordship for 
translation, for Etienne was in no state of 
mind to make himself understood in English. 

“My word! I think the balmy idiot means 
that there is some sort of chasm blocking us 
to the south,” laughed His Lordship. “Serve 
212 


RETRIBUTION 


means a cleft—but a 250-foot drop! I pre¬ 
sume the Rocher tumbles down through it for 
that amazing fall. And of course we can’t 
get out back with that ladder tree gone. 
Rather neat, that, what? Here’s where 
they’ll have the party, I take it,” he concluded 
cheerfully. 

Etienne wagged his head and pointed to the 
walls of cliffs all around them. This was once 
a huge water-filled gorge, before the Rocher 
had cut that cleft in the living rock. Its 
sides were almost perpendicular. 

“We no can get out of dis, if de Injuns 
block de carry around Grand Serre,” he in¬ 
sisted. 

“Topping!” exploded Lord Jim, while 
Ajax and Diomed rocked on their toes with 
the anticipated joys of combat. “So we’ll 
have to fight our way through the blighters, 
eh?” he asked, delightedly. 

Etienne shook his head. “No; dey no 
shoot. Every wan know everyt’ing in dees 
co’ntree. Pleece-man, he come. Rope! In- 
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jun no fool! We was all come dead by leetly 
accidense—dat’s what!” 

“Humph!” snorted His Lordship. “Little 
accident, eh? Well, let ’em try it! We’ll 
spring an accident or two of our own, my 
word!” 

He turned away ruggedly, as if dismissing 
the subject, and presently Nishimi-wog called 
them to supper. They ate with less than their 
usual hilarity, every one discussing what was 
to be done—to fortify the camp, to move on 
that night, even to abandon the canoes and 
try to climb out of the gorge and make their 
way overland down to civilization. 

“No; we stay right here!” declared Lord 
Jim, when Ulysses had made that crafty pro¬ 
posal. “Fawncy our leaving all our trophies 
and hiking through these beastly scrags all 
for a lot of balmy redskins! We’ll keep a 
guard to-night, that’s all.” 

Bob felt that, whatever it was, it would be 
spectacular and stupendous, that retribution 
that the Naskapi would take for their shoot- 
214 



RETRIBUTION 


ing the sacred White Bear. And, to satisfy 
the pact with the Montaignais, it would at 
the same time either deliver Nagushwa into 
their hands or abolish it entirely. Otherwise 
the thing would lack that completeness of fin¬ 
ish that delighted the Indian mind. But what 
the catastrophe was going to be he could not 
imagine. 

Next morning he knew. Even before day¬ 
light (his was the four-to-eight watch) his 
nostrils became aware of a pungent, acrid 
odor. At first he thought it was the combi¬ 
nation of their own fire and vagrant winds 
blowing about camp, but his forefinger told 
him that the wind was still blowing steadily 
from the north down the vast gorge in which 
they were camped. No; it was more than 
that! He knew that the woods were as dry as 
tinder and that the moss and needles crackled 
under foot when he walked. By dawn he had 
learned the appalling truth —fire was the 
weapon the tribesmen were going to use! 
The first faint streaks of dawn revealed a 


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thin haze out over the Rocher, and a mist of 
it was hanging and swaying along the lower 
walls of the cliffs. He roused out the camp 
with his yell of discovery. 

Etienne and Nishimi-wog bounded out of 
their lean-to at his cry. One look set the 
French-Canadian into transports of excite¬ 
ment. 

“Sacre! De woods was all burn of it!” he 
yelled. “Coom, M’sieu Bob!—we go look!” 
He motioned to the canoe and they got in and 
shoved her out into the stream. One glance 
back up the stream toward the bare cliff of the 
Ladder Portage told the story. Gone was 
the huge notched trunk that had lain there 
for so many seasons, and in its place a 
dense cloud of smoke rose from the woods 
below and covered the heavens with a huge 
pall. And it was bent over toward them by 
the wind as it topped the cliff! 

“Mon Diew \—we was all be corp!” grunted 
Etienne, shoving the canoe ashore with a single 
paddle stoke. 


216 



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“I say—rippin’, isn’t it?” grinned His Lord- 
ship, as they told him the news. “They’re 
smokin’ us out like badgers! Shall we run 
for it, boys?” 

They agreed that there was little time to 
waste. The tents came down in double time 
and a hasty coffee and bacon was downed 
while the packs were being made up. In 
twenty minutes more the canoes were loaded 
and the whole fleet fled down the Rocher. 

“How far is it to this Grand Serre?” they 
heard Lord Jim ask Nishimi-wog as his canoe 
forged past them under the Indian’s steady 
stroke. 

“Quite leetle ways—mebbe t’ree mile. 
Plainty bad water; down tree, shallows,” 
grunted the Indian. 

“We should have gone out last night—but 
I hated to run from the beggars,” replied 
His Lordship, cheerfully, and that was the 
only word of regret that they ever heard him 
utter. 

The backwater soon gave on a chattering 
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rapids. Down it they plunged and rolled in 
single file, following Etienne’s lead, as he 
knew the channel. They were congratu¬ 
lating each other on having left the fire be¬ 
hind, when, right in front of them, in a nar¬ 
row sluice of the river, a tiny wisp of smoke 
arose suddenly and a whole spruce hurst into 
a pyre of flame, the smoke from it ascending 
in a tall column. His Lordship’s express 
rifle banged out twice, and then the canoes 
raced down into it without chance to pause. 

“Wheel—Duck, Pat!” yelled Bob stop¬ 
ping a second to turn up his collar. Blazing 
wisps of spruce twigs fell all about them, and 
for an instant the heat and smoke hovered 
over them in a stifling wave. Then the canoe 
shot on down into clear water. Behind them 
the underbrush and the contingent spruces 
caught fire and a roaring crackling blaze filled 
the river, its welts of smoke chasing them on 
down the Rocher. 

“If they can manage to get far enough 
ahead to start that again , before we get there, 
218 



RETRIBUTION 


we’ll be trapped for fair,” said Bob. “Pad¬ 
dle, Pat—give it to herl” 

They drove on after the others The same 
idea seemed to have overtaken the whole 
party, for the canoes went on at breakneck 
speed. Somewhere, up in the brush, invisible, 
gliding along like snakes, the Indians were 
paralleling them. It needed only a delay of 
some kind for them to be lost indeed! 

And the river was ready with that delay. 
Two miles further on they overtook the other 
canoes, now all spread out over a flat and rip¬ 
pling shallows where the entire river had 
widened out, combing through bowlders and 
sliding in troubled wavelets over pebbly shal¬ 
lows. Their own keel grated against bottom 
almost at once. It was a case of choose your 
own route and get out and wade without de¬ 
lay. Instantly Bob was over the side, his 
tracking line in hand while Patroclus at stern 
held the canoe from swinging and guided her 
after Bob’s lead. They splashed through 
cold water until their knees ached with the 
219 



MEDICINE GOLD 


unaccustomed movement; they grounded on 
rocks and cursed; they picked the canoe up 
bodily and dragged her over pebbles, unmind¬ 
ful of ominous rips in the canvas. It was 
essential to get on, and they were falling be¬ 
hind ! 

Eventually came the blessed deep waters 
again. The river gathered itself together and 
disappeared around a bend, marked by a huge 
escarpment of granite rock weathered and 
scoured by thousands of spring floods. A 
deep boom came from beyond it, and one after 
another they saw the leading canoes gather 
headway and disappear at terrific speed 
around the curve. 

“Rapids coming, drop of thirty feet—I re¬ 
member seeing it on the map at Roberval!” 
cried Bob, paddling hard. Of all the rapids 
they ever shot that was the one which would 
remain longest in their memories! In less 
than a hundred yards the whole river dropped 
thirty feet, swirling down in one huge, foam- 
flecked wave, something like that big fellow 
220 



RETRIBUTION 


they had seen on La Riviere du Nord; only 
this one went down at a long, dizzy slant. 
There was nothing to strike against; they got 
an impression of furious speed, a sudden 
thought of the drowning that awaited them if 
the canoe should get turned sidewise and up¬ 
set; a determination to paddle like fury and 
keep steerage way on her, a wild impulse to 
screech like Piutes, a sudden dive through 
huge gouged and curling whitecaps at the foot 
of the chute, a wetting that knocked the 
breath out of them—and then stillness, and a 
period of laughing relief when there was noth¬ 
ing to do but joke nervously and bail out the 
water that had been shipped. 

The leading canoe disappeared around a 
narrow bend. Bob and Patroclus were busy 
paddling hard to keep themselves from being 
flung bodily into the spruces by the current, 
but once in the bend a discouraging vista 
opened up ahead. The gorge had narrowed 
in here, and the tall timber growing on dry 
ground had come in close to the banks. 

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Dozens of dead trees had fallen across the 
stream at every height and angle, and under 
them went the deep waters of the river, swift, 
silent, scouring along at a terrific rate but so 
deep that they could not see bottom. Ahead 
the other three canoes were already in vari¬ 
ous states of upheaval. His Lordship and 
Nishimi-wog were standing on a trunk, 
hauling their canoe over it between them by 
its gunwales. Etienne’s birchbark was just 
ahead of them and the three in it were try¬ 
ing to squeeze her under a tree trunk which 
crossed not two feet above the stream. Ajax 
and Diomed were stuck hard aground on a 
submerged stub which held their keel and de¬ 
fied furious paddling and much belaboring of 
each other with trenchant sarcasms. 

They came out on clear water at last. 
Around another bend they found the whole 
party camped on a big flat rock with the 
canoes hauled up and the kettle boiling. Bob 
remonstrated as they ran ashore. 

“I thought we were trying to beat them to 
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the Grand Serre, sir,” he said to Lord Jim, 
not offering to get out of his canoe. 

“Oh, well!” shrugged His Lordship. 
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, 
I fawncy.” He seemed entirely indifferent, 
self-confident, and went on worrying at a suc¬ 
culent venison steak broiled on a green stick 
and fresh from the fire which John Charley 
had proffered him. 

Bob gave him up and went ashore to join 
them at lunch without a word. It takes your 
Englishman to sit down in a tight place, un¬ 
moved, unafraid, entirely confident of the ulti¬ 
mate outcome! In any event, by all means, 
it was necessary to eat and drink! But while 
His Lordship may have dealt with Hindus, 
Malays and Kaffirs, Bob felt that he had no 
conception of the American Indian as an an¬ 
tagonist. 

“We was carry around Le Piege rapeed 
next; den coom Le Grand Serre an’ we go 
over de mountain,” said Etienne, as they set 
out again after lunch. Le Piege! The 
223 




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Trap!—sinister name! thought Bob. “Why 
is it called Le Piege, Etienne ?” he asked. 

“Dey was beeg falls in de middly of heem. 
Man get in dere, he no come out alive!” ex¬ 
plained the guide. “Leetly carry, though.” 

The “leetly carry” was a rough one they 
found out when they came to make it. It 
had not been cleared in many years and 
through the dry bush they had fairly to force 
the canoes. In fact, after getting lost several 
times, they found that the trail was sure to 
be where the bushes grew thickest. 

“Now you was see de Grand Serre!” said 
Etienne, when the canoes were finally as¬ 
sembled and packed at the lower landing. 
Above them gushed out the Rocher through 
a rock defile, still muttering and grumbling 
after its tumble over the falls. The eddying 
waters swirled by and slewed the canoes about 
almost unmanageably as they took the cur¬ 
rent. Out from under the canopy of green 
they swung—and then every man laid aside 
his paddle to gaze ahead in sheer amazement! 

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It was a mighty scene that lay before them! 
Here the high cliff walls of the gorge circled 
around in a kind of amphitheater, unscalable, 
ending in a massive wall that stretched flat 
across their path half a mile below. Split¬ 
ting it in twain from top to bottom was a nar¬ 
row cleft, worn by the Rocher during the 
long centuries, and even at that distance they 
could hear the mutter of the high falls that 
marked its headlong rush down the Grand 
Serre. Two hundred and fifty feet drop! 
What must that lower pool be like on the 
other side of that huge barrier! 

Etienne pointed ahead to the right, where 
a tree-clad shoulder filled in a corner of the 
amphitheater to one side of the Serre. “Dah 
was de trail oop out of dis gorge. We make 
heem to-night, an’ camp down below in de 
co’ntry of ma people,” he announced. 

A quicker stroke drove all the canoes on 
headlong. Here was the place! No man 
could get out of here save over that wooded 
shoulder. If that was held by the Indians 
225 



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and all this walled valley set on fire— Far 
up on a hill, a shrill yell made Bob check and 
pause for a moment. 

“What was that, Pat?” he cried, a shock of 
almost terror thrilling through him. “Hear it ?” 

“Yes—there it goes again!” replied Pat- 
roclus, listening intently. It was repeated, 
much nearer them; then from right up on the 
hillside above them; then back of them, and 
on back, clear to Le Piege! 

Immediately thin rifts of smoke began to 
weave out of the forest. There were a dozen 
of them, wherever they looked. Then came 
the roaring crackle of flames and the whole 
forest under the cliffs burst into sheets of fire. 
Trapped! It was a gorgeous stupendous 
pitfall! Etienne was yelling like a madman, 
paddling his heart out, with the others fol¬ 
lowing him in one last spurt to reach the 
Grand Serre Portage in time. They might 
as well have saved their efforts, for at that 
end the whole hillside burst suddenly ablaze 
as if lighted in a dozen places at once. The 
226 



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Indians had no intention of holding it them¬ 
selves; fire could do that. Smoke came bil¬ 
lowing down over the reaches of the Rocher, 
and behind it came a steady crackle as of 
musketry, and reports like cannon cracks of 
green trees bursting with the intense heat. 
A high wind got up from nowhere, filling 
their eyes with acrid smoke, covering them 
with blazing, falling leaves. The fire made 
it, creating its own draught in that narrow 
canon. Before their eyes a whole tree top 
burst into vivid flame, exploded with the 
steam of bursting sap, and soared high on the 
wind to drop hissing into the river. 

They had now huddled together for mutual 
assistance. The river was bearing them 
steadily down under the walls of the Grand 
Serre. Etienne and Nishimi-wog were yell¬ 
ing and gesticulating, trying to make them¬ 
selves understood in the intolerable roar of 
flames all around them. A deep rumble that 
underlay it all like a bass organ pipe told the 
others what he meant. Somewhere, right 
227 



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near them, hidden in the smoke, the river was 
gliding on into the maw of the Serre—and 
they must get ashore without delay or be 
swept into it! 

Coughing and fighting through the murk, 
they drove the canoes across the treacherous 
current. Bob saw Etienne and Antoine sud¬ 
denly leap overboard in four feet of water. 
Ulysses jumped out and they all hastily pulled 
out the duffel and slung it ashore to where a 
dim bank of pebbles could be seen under the 
smoke. Then the three, at a sign from 
Etienne, turned the canoe over in the water 
and Ulysses and Antoine dove under it, 
Etienne remaining outside to hold it and 
steady it. 

• The others had caught the idea and were 
following suit. Under their canoes was the 
only place where man could survive this. 
The pool itself was already like a furnace 
and the smoke impossible to breathe. Bob 
could see dim figures working like mad all 
around him, dim objects hurtling through the 
228 



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air to land on the beach, and then the long 
bulk of a canoe rising on men’s heads to lower 
carefully on to the water. Patroclus had 
already cast their loads ashore from his end. 
Heaving his pack, a set of caribou horns, and 
a wad of fur out of the canoe, he signaled to 
Bob and they jumped out over opposite sides 
simultaneously, raised the canoe over their 
heads and lowered it to the water surface. 

Inside it was nearly dark. Indistinctly 
Bob could see Patroclus’ head rising above 
the water and reaching nearly up to the canoe 
bottom. 

“How’s everything, pal? Did you get 
burnt any?” he called, his voice a hollow rum¬ 
ble under the canoe. 

Pat nodded. “Better not talk much. 
We’ve got to economize our air. Gee, it’s 
hot in here!” 

“I’ll go out and splash water on the canoe 
bottom a bit—get a good grip on her, now, 
or we’ll get carried off by the current!” 

Bob swung out from under the canoe and 
229 



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came up with his head just out of water. 

Stealthy currents tugged at his legs, but he 
could hold bottom well enough. Steam was 
rising in a cloud from the bottom of the 
canoe and he slapped water in spurts over it. 
Ashore he could see nothing but a black pall, 
shot through with red tongues. Blazing 
branches and twigs came down all around him 
in showers, the hiss of their quenching rapid 
as raindrops. He found that by lowering his 
nose to an inch above the water he could find 
air that could be breathed; at any level higher, 
he was choked with the smoke fumes at once. 

The heat seemed getting even more intense, 
Bob felt, as he maintained his vigil, and he 
wondered if it would not be worth while to 
risk a crossing to the opposite shore. But 
that would be futile, he soon realized. He 
had but to look over there to see lines of bright 
flames shining through the murk. It was all 
afire, for the flames had leaped the river. 
Then a sudden gust of wind drove vast sheets 
of flame right down over him. A murderous 
230 



RETRIBUTION 


crackle of small branches taking fire roared 
out at him and he ducked hastily under the 
canoe. 

“How goes it?—Getting pretty close in 
here,” Patroclus’ voice greeted him. “We’re 
using up all our air.” 

“Terrific! The worst is going on right 
above us now,” announced Bob. “After a bit 
we’d better lift her up and clean out this old 
air. There’s fresh air along the surface-” 

A terrific drubbing on the canoe bottom 
above them interrupted him. Outside, the 
whole forest was evidently falling over on 
them in a wall of burning brands, judging 
from these sounds. Then came the boom of 
some heavy object that smote the roof of their 
canoe like a drum. With it came a rending 
and tearing sound of split fibers. A black and 
smoking stub jutted through over their heads. 
The boys watched it, paralyzed for a mo¬ 
ment, as water began to spurt through, 
quenching it and falling like a spigot tap on 
the level surface of the water under their canoe. 

231 




MEDICINE GOLD 


“Gorry, we’ll be drowned now!—I believe 
the whole canoe’s under water—it must be!” 
coughed Bob. “Let’s get out from under.” 

“Might as well,” chattered Patroclus. I’m 
nearly frozen. I’d just as leave be burned 
for a while.” 

Side by side they wiggled out from under 
the gunwale and came sputtering to the sur¬ 
face. Dense black smoke hung over every¬ 
thing, but dimly they could see the backs of the 
other canoes like giant turtles steaming in the 
heat. Across their own canoe, entirely sub¬ 
merging it, lay a charred tree trunk, its upper 
side still blazing. 

“Get hold of it and heave her off!” choked 
Bob, trying to breathe through his wet sleeve 
in the overpowering murk. 

They grabbed the outer end and heaved up 
with all their strength. Instantly the canoe 
shot out, like a fruit-seed under some huge 
thumb—and the perverse demons that ruled 
the fates willed that it should dart with the 
speed of a driven arrow out into the stream. 

232 



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The two youths grabbed it and hung on. The 
next instant they realized what was going to 
happen, for the canoe began to move faster 
and faster as it shot for the maw of the Grand 
Serre! 

Bob reached out and gripped Patroclus’ 
hand. “Good-by, old chum—save yourself if 
you can,” he yelled in the slender lad’s ear. 

“Left—left—swim off to the left!” shouted 
Patroclus, in return. He was farther ahead 
and, keeping his wits about him, had already 
abandoned the canoe. The walls of the Serre 
loomed up black and enormous before them. 
They were gliding swiftly and surely through 
an impenetrable gloom, toward a dull hollow 
rumble that rose out of unseen depths. Then 
Bob saw Patroclus rise high out of water and 
threw both arms around a dim columnar ob¬ 
ject that jutted out of the chasm. It turned 
out to be a tree trunk that at some time or 
other had pitched down headlong here, to land 
on the first stage of the ladder of falls in the 
Serre and lodge there, jutting up out of the 
233 



MEDICINE GOLD 


cleft. It was jammed firmly to one side and 
held there by the rush of the waters. Bob 
snatched for Pat’s shoulders as he himself was 
being swept by, clawed fiercely, climbed up and 
got hold of a branch stub. Their canoe 
slid on past—on down— boom! — brrrumm !— 
boomj boom , boom! Sounds of it striking 
terrace after terrace came echoing up through 
the cleft; then all further news of it was lost. 

Again Bob and Patroclus gripped hands, 
without a word. Their lives were safe, for 
the present. . . . Looking down into the cleft, 
Bob was surprised to find that he could see 
clearly. The air was good here; for a strong 
draught induced by the fire came up the Serre. 

“Hey, Pat—look down! Say, we can climb 
down the trunk and stand up in the pool down 
there—it’s a dandy place! Say, I’m going to 
get the others !” he cried, as one idea led to an¬ 
other and at last he reached the big thought of 
all. 

At once he let himself down into the eddy 
behind the tree top and groped his way along 
234 




RETRIBUTION 


the rock wall. Soon his feet found bottom 
and he crouched, his nose close to the water, 
his feet wading on bottom following the shore 
line. Presently he came to the canoes again. 
Little spurts of water dashing over them and 
a head outside told him that they were still 
working, still enduring the heat and smoke, 
still keeping the canoes from taking fire. The 
worst of it was over now, but it would be 
many hours before the air would be fit to 
breathe. 

Bob bent down over the first head. It was 
His Lordship’s, cool and indomitable as 
ever. 

“How’s it going?” he shouted. 

“A little bit of all right, ye know—but cold, 
beastly cold! We’re all nearly chilled to 
death in this water. I’d get up if it didn’t 
choke me.” 

“Sink the canoe and come on—I’ve found 
a place to go,” said Bob. 

His Lordship reached in and pulled out 
Antoine and Etienne. “Turn her over and 
235 



MEDICINE GOLD 


sink her under water,” he ordered, “M’sieu 
Bob’s found a place.” 

While they were at it Bob warned the others. 
Soon the canoes were all sunk and anchored 
by their track lines and the whole party set off, 
swimming low and following Bob. One by 
one they reached the top of the tree trunk jut¬ 
ting up out of the Serre, and one by one they 
climbed down, to gather in the first pool. 
High overhead on both sides towered the giant 
walls of the Serre, but it was fresh and clear 
in here—a vast change after the fuming smoke 
of the upper river. 

“I say, ye know—topping this—isn’t it?”— 
rather /” burbled His Lordship, looking around 
happily. “In an hour or so we shall be going 
up there, all sereneo! Bob, old thing!—our 
very best!” he congratulated. 

“Gosh, Pat—there’s our canoe!” yelled 
Bob, suddenly, peering down through the 
Serre. Around their knees boiled and swirled 
the water of the Rocher River; above them bel¬ 
lowed the cascade of the first chute; but, far 
236 




RETRIBUTION 


down through the cleft could be seen a strip of 
green forest and a fragment of the lower pool. 
Across it had floated their canoe, bottom up 
and in the grip of a whirlpool, but still afloat. 



CHAPTER XI 

ST. CESARE 

I T was an hour later when, with chattering 
teeth and shivering bodies, the Trojans 
decided that the heat and the smoke of 
the upper valley would be preferable to the 
cold and watery tumult around them at the 
foot of that great tree trunk which lay jammed 
in Le Grand Serre. One by one they climbed 
up it again and crawled along the rock face to 
shore. The wind blowing up the Serre had 
cleared their end of the valley considerably. 
Trees and duff smoldered, and there were 
still patches of fire high up on the cliff 
opposite. A great black valley of desolation 
spread as far back as Le Piege rapids; be¬ 
yond that the eternal green of virgin forest. 
238 


ST. CESARE 

The Indians had not destroyed so very much 
of their territory, a mere strip of it when you 
came to consider the vast area that was theirs, 
still free from the lumberman’s ax and the 
pernicious pulp mill. His Lordship remarked 
as much, cheerful and unmoved as ever, when 
they all set about raising the canoes and 
searching the shore for what was left of their 
duffel. 

The Naskapi had failed in their revenge, 
but how close to it they had come, the black¬ 
ened antlers, shriveled and tortured hides, 
packs that fell into charred pieces of cloth at 
the touch told them. 

“We moos hurry on down to St. Cesare, 
M’sieus,” declared Etienne, shaking his 
head over the ruins. “Not mooch grub; no 
blanket; moos do heem in wan day, mebbe.” 

Still, there were a few serviceable blankets 
left, those that had been folded and put on the 
under side of a pack the fire had not charred. 
For these a set of tump straps were made up 
bv Etienne and Nishimi-wog. It was the 
239 



MEDICINE GOLD 


pack that they themselves used mostly in their 
work as coureur de bois. They first cut a 
broad forehead strap eighteen inches long 
from the ruined hides, and to each end of this 
strap they fastened pieces of tracking line 
about eight feet long. Spreading these out 
on a blanket about two feet apart, its ends 
were folded in over the lines. On this all the 
food and utensils needed to make up a pack 
were heaped, and then the whole was rolled 
into a bundle. Pulling on the lines shirred 
the ends of the bundle in tight, and the lines 
were then crossed and tied as in an ordinary 
package. Picking it up by the tump strap, 
the pack could be heaved up on one’s back and 
and the strap adjusted over the forehead so 
as almost to balance it on the shoulders. 

Up over the trail started the canoes and 
packers. It was a scorched and smoking hill¬ 
side up which it led in steep zigzags. Stumps 
still blazed sulkily; the indescribable odor of 
a duff fire filled the air. 

“We’ll leave this desolation to our Indian 


240 



ST. CESARE 


friends,” said His Lordship cheerily. “I 
fawncy they've all gone back north now, the 
Naskapi swine, don’tyeknow! as for the Mon- 
taignais and Nagushwa we shall see them at 
St. Cesare, shawn’t we?” 

Indeed not a sign nor a sound of Indians 
was to be seen; once having set the fire—and 
failed—the Naskapi apparently had not 
dared do more. It was not the Indian way 
to incur any penalties themselves by creating 
direct evidence. So far no one had even laid 
eyes on a single Naskapi in all this, they re¬ 
called. The Indians had been too wily for 
that! 

Up on the ridge they got their first view 
of civilization, the first in nearly a month. 
Below them, after a few more miles of wilder¬ 
ness, the Rocher wound down through a placid 
habitant country, all cut into long narrow 
farms fronting on the river, each with its little 
stone house and barn. This ridge marked 
the southern boundary of the Montaignais 
Reservation. 


241 



MEDICINE GOLD 


“Good-by, you blankety-binged Naskapi!” 
roared Ajax sardonically, as they started 
down. “You gave us a fine party—but it 
didn’t work!” 

Not a sound; not a single derisive 
yell, answered him. The silent and smoky 
valley alone spoke the anger of the red 
men. 

Down at the shore of the lower pool, where 
it cascaded out of the Grand Serre, they came 
upon Bob’s canoe, stranded on a stump. It 
had come down that fearful ladder, light, 
borne on the tossing waves of the river, prac¬ 
tically unscathed except for some torn strips 
of canvas and some broken ribs. A few 
tacks and a little melted canoe glue repaired 
the canvas enough to float Bob and Patroclus 
down after the others to where a huge fire 
glowed in a grove of pines, the last outpost 
of the forest before civilization would he 
reached. They spent the evening drying out 
clothes and then turned in to sleep like logs. 
It had been a day! 


242 



ST. CESARE 


The run to St. Cesare next day was unin¬ 
teresting. Habitants and cows stared at 
them from the banks with equal lack of in¬ 
terest or comprehension. To the natives the 
battered party was just Etienne and his part¬ 
ner Nishimi-wog, bringing out another crowd 
of “sports,” with the inevitable heads. The 
two guides were continually calling “ Bo* jou! 
— Bo* jou!** in return to greetings from shore, 
and chaffing with the habitants as they passed, 
for they knew every one on the river. 

After the last bend, the Hudson’s Bay Post 
of St. Cesare came in sight, a little rambling 
collection of log and stone houses, with quaint 
dormer windows set in the roofs, while over 
it towered its stone church, built in the form 
of a cross, with slender, pointed steeples rising 
from gable and apse. Bob looked at the vil¬ 
lage with keen curiosity, for it was here that 
Nagushwa, the other mystery of the trip, 
would come out. They had escaped the Nas- 
kapi; here was the headquarters of the 
Montaignais, and here they would be able to 
243 




MEDICINE GOLD 


question the Cure of the village and probe the 
mystery of Nagushwa and its relation to the 
Montaignais. 

A vociferous welcome awaited them at the 
Post, dogs and children running along the 
bank while braves and squaws came out of 
their tepees in the Indian quarter to watch 
them go by. Every one, even the stolid red 
men, seemed heading towards the landing to 
meet them. Etienne sang a deep-chested 
chanson of the North, waving his paddle and 
calling to relatives of every shade and de¬ 
scription as they swept on down the Rocher 
to the landing. 

Rut a shriller cry arose from the women 
and children as they recognized Antoine in 
Etienne’s canoe. “Antwine! Antwine!” they 
shrieked. “He comes! He comes!” they 
called, and “Nagushwa! Nagushwa!” shrieked 
the Indian children. 

Bob wondered what all the excitement was 
about, but his thoughts were quite occupied 
just then in noting the queer costumes of 
244 



ST. CESARE 


the people of this forgotten corner of the 
world. Men, blue-shirted and gray-trousered, 
with gay moccasins on their feet and belted 
with red and blue silk sashes shouted 
welcomes at Etienne. Habitant girls, the 
wind blowing their calicoes about their comely 
figures, jostled and crowded each other 
as their shrill voices called out to An¬ 
toine. And back of them all stalked the In¬ 
dians, tall and silent, wrapped in red blankets 
or with white, blue-banded ones thrown over 
their shoulders. There seemed an unusual 
number of them, Bob thought, and some 
looked as wild as if just out of the forest. 
These Montaignais seemed a different breed 
from the usual old-clothes Indian one gener¬ 
ally finds around a Hudson Bay Post. 

“Ah—mon poupa et mon mamanl” choked 
Etienne, springing out of the canoe the 
moment it touched the dock and flinging him¬ 
self upon an aged couple who broke forth 
from the crowd. Antoine was scarcely be¬ 
hind him, leaving Ulysses to hold the canoe. 

245 



MEDICINE GOLD 


He was in the old habitant woman’s arms in 
a flash, while Etienne’s burly embrace held 
them all in a most tempestuous reunion. 

The Trojans and His Lordship waited in 
the canoes until the family greetings should 
have abated somewhat. Just then the crowd 
parted respectfully and the Cure came down 
to the dock in company with a grizzled Scotch¬ 
man, the Factor of the Post. Bob observed 
the Cure with something of awe. It was 
difficult to realize the churchly power of this 
man, who held the very souls and lives of his 
simple people in the hollow of his hand. But 
it was all benevolent power, Bob was sure, 
for his serene old face shone welcomes and 
blessings under the curled black hat of his 
priesthood. His black gown swept about 
him and the white bands of his clerical collar 
blew about in the never-ceasing winds, as he 
and the Factor joined the Bissette family 
reunion. 

“Nagushwa? Have you got it, my son?” 
the Cure asked Etienne. 

246 




ST. CESARE 


“Oh, aye!” put in the Factor, his voice 
worried and exasperated. “Yon bit baubee 
has been at its deevil’s work again, we hear! 
Give it to the Cure, Etienne, and let’s hae an 
end o’t.” 

Etienne brought out the gold ornament. 
“Take it—it is death! I never want to see 
it again!” he said, thrusting the gold orna¬ 
ment into the Cure’s hands. 

The latter put his hand benignly on the 
habitant's shoulder. “It is better so, my son. 
We shall put it back in the crypt, where it can 
do no more harm.” 

“I say, M’sieu le Cure,” called out His 
Lordship from the canoe, “might I examine 
it before you do so?” 

The Factor turned and eyed him sternly. 
“Aweel an’ aweel, young mon—and why?” 
he asked. 

“I fawncy I have a right to,” retorted 
Lord Jim. “This Nagushwa is called also 
the Locket of St. Die, is it not?” 

“Aye, and what then?” inquired the Factor 
247 



MEDICINE GOLD 


with the rugged skepticism of the Scotsman. 

“Nothing, only I am a St. Die,” said His 
Lordship. “James Neville, Lord St. Die, 
ye know.” 

“Oh!—I beg Your Lordship’s pardon!” 
the Factor exclaimed. “You are the Lord of 
St. Die? I have mail for Your Lordship— 
go, Pierre Cadotte, and get it, quick!—of 
course Your Lordship may handle the locket, 
’twill be verra intereestin’, I’m thinkin’, for 
a real St. Die to see it.” 

The Cure had been standing looking at 
them uncertainly all this time, with the Locket 
of St. Die in his hand. The Indians had 
gathered near him in a compact knot, and Bob 
could hear the muttered whisper, “Nagushwa! 
Nagushwa! Nagushwa!” passing among 
them like the croaking of frogs. They had 
no particular respect for Lord Jim, and his 
nobility, but desire for possession of the 
locket now fairly blazed in their eyes. The 
very sight of it seemed to inflame them. 

“You are a St. Die?” said the Cure at 


248 



ST. CESARE 


length, regarding Lord Jim with a mild 
curiosity in his eyes. 

“Rawther!” grinned His Lordship. 
“Might I have a look at this balmy gewgaw of 
my respected family, then, Father?” he sug¬ 
gested, a touch of irony in his tones. 

“My children, we shall go to the church,” 
declared the Cure after a moment of further 
hesitation. “This is a very weighty matter 
and not lightly to be undertaken. For you, 
young sir,” he added, turning to Lord Jim, 
“as you are a St. Die, I have something of 
special interest there to show you.” 

He turned and led the way to the little 
stone church. Etienne and Antoine, with the 
grandparents, followed him, surrounded by 
most of the habitants of the place, all chatter¬ 
ing volubly in French. Behind them crowded 
the Indians in a compact mass, never letting 
themselves get more than a few feet behind 
the Cure’s back, never letting their gaze wan¬ 
der from the coveted Nagushwa in his hands. 
The Trojans and the Factor followed, en- 
249 



MEDICINE GOLD 


gaged in the usual formalities of intro¬ 
ductions. His Lordship was looking over his 
home mail abstractedly. So far nothing had 
been said about their adventures with the 
Naskapi. The boys had tacitly agreed to let 
Lord Jim tell that, if he should feel so dis¬ 
posed. 

The little church at once filled to overflow¬ 
ing. The Cure excused himself for a mo¬ 
ment and presently returned out of his pri¬ 
vate oratory, bearing an old volume with him. 

“Lord St. Die,” he said, “here is the record 
of the French side of your family. This 
volume is one of the Jesuit Relations, by 
Father Le Jeune, who was one of the first 
to labor among the Montaignais. You may 
read it over at your leisure. The main facts 
of interest to you are these: The first French 
St. Die came to Canada with the Sieur de 
Roberval, the original governor of our Can¬ 
ada. This St. Die became a coureur de bois, 
as many young French noblemen of that time 
did. He established a trading post with the 
250 



ST. CESARE 


Montaignais on what is now Lake St. John. 
He named it ‘Roberval,’ in honor of our first 
governor. This St. Die was called Pierre le 
Loup by the Indians and was killed in a fight 
with the wild Naskapi to the north.” His 
Lordship grinned enigmatically at that and 
the Trojans felt, too, that they had cause to 
remember the Naskapi! “He left among 
his effects this gold locket,” went on the Cure. 
“As he had no heirs, it fell, in the rude di¬ 
vision of property at that time, to a friend, a 
fellow coureur de bois , Gaston de Bissette, 
the ancestor of the present Bissettes, of 
Etienne and little Antoine, here, who wears 
it as the present-day heir. This much Father 
Le Jeune relates. Now, what kin are you, 
my lord, to Pierre de St. Die, the coureur de 
bois, may I ask?” concluded the Cure. 

Lord Jim thought a while. “Of course I 
know the book of the St. Dies, the English 
family, by heart,” he began. “The first 
English St. Die was a younger son of that 
old Marquis de St. Die whom Louis XIII 
251 




MEDICINE GOLD 


and Richelieu threw into prison, beheaded, 
and confiscated all his estates. The older 
son, we know, fled to Canada with Roberval, 
at the same time that my ancestor escaped to 
England. I fawncy this St. Die of Father 
Le Jeune’s relation was that same elder son, 
ye know—wasn’t he?” 

“Aweel, that settles it!” broke in the Fac¬ 
tor, abruptly. “The locket is really Your 
Lordship’s,” he bowed. “According to com¬ 
mon law, as representative of the younger 
brother. And, further, aught else that these 
Bissettes may have treasured of the French 
St. Die’s belongings are yours, too, sir. 
They go to the younger son and his descend¬ 
ants, that Frenchman having no direct heirs.” 

“No!” bellowed a big buck among the 
Indians who had been listening avidly. “No 
good! Nagushwa, heem belong to de Mon- 
taignais!” he yelled. “My old man say dat 
Pierre le Loup have a writin’ in dat Nagushwa 
w’ich geev heem all de land, by de great 
white king. Frontenac geev us de land. 

252 



ST. CESARE 


Writin’ say so! No good dat Montaignais 
lands be geev now to dis white man, who nev- 
vair leev in dis co’ntree, nevvair see heem— 
wah!” he grunted furiously, pointing to Lord 
Jim. 

The Factor snorted impatiently. A mut¬ 
ter of intense interest went up among the 
habitants at the Montaignais chief’s words. 
At last the secret of why the Indians had al¬ 
ways tried to get possession of Nagushwa 
was out! As for Lord Jim, he looked at the 
Indian chief dumbfounded. 

“My word!” he exclaimed. “Their tra¬ 
ditions last as long as our records! Fawncy! 
—I presume Roberval must have given Pierre 
de St. Die a seignory in the name of the king, 
though. And, in the usual vague boundaries 
of these seignories, it probably gave him 
everything from the St. Lawrence north to 
Labrador. And, of course, he kept it in this 
old medieval locket—there is a record of some 
such deadly ornament being in the family. 
I’ve read it somewhere.” 

253 



MEDICINE GOLD 


“The tradition of the Seignory of the 
Rocher River is more persistent among my 
poor people, the Montaignais, than in any 
deed of record, for there is none,” replied the 
Cure. “Your Lordship’s ancestral uncle may 
have said something about it to a Montaignais 
chief of that period; anyway, the locket, or 
Nagushwa, Medicine Gold, as the Indians 
call it, has been kept here in the church vaults 
for most of its history because generation 
after generation, whenever returned to the 
Bissettes, the Indians try to steal it. Every 
Indian who has taken it has evidently tried 
to open it and been killed. No habitant has 
ever tried to open it because of the seal of the 
Jesuits, ‘A.M.D.G.,’ on the inner cover.” 

“My word!” exclaimed His Lordship. 
“Let us open it then and see.” 

“Ah, no! Please don’t, Lord Jeem— 
please!” begged Antoine, childish terror in 
his shrill tones. “De church say ‘No.’ It 
was keel you!” 

“Fawncy!” chuckled His Lordship. “It’s 
254 




ST, CESARE 


mine, though—he looked to the Cure for per¬ 
mission. “It just wants a little caution, 
kiddie—never fear.” He had drawn his 
hunting knife, and, as they all watched, he 
pressed with the point of it on the little gold 
knob that held the inner cover. It moved to 
one side, disclosing a tiny hole in the cover. 
Instantly came a sharp metallic click and a 
small needle shot up. The knife point slipped 
off the knob, and immediately the needle 
disappeared and the knob snapped back into 
place over the hole again. But it left a small 
watery drop on the cover. 

“Poison. Cobra, I’ll bet!” ejaculated His 
Lordship. “Virulent forever, least drop. 
He who opens me dies! Rummy old gold¬ 
smiths those were in medieval times, eh?” 
He dipped the point of the knife in the tear 
of liquid and looked around for something to 
test it on. There was a scuffle as the crowd 
pushed back from him. Presently a small 
mangy cur, of the sort that are always a pest 
around Hudson Bay posts, was passed over 
255 



MEDICINE GOLD 


the shoulders of the crowd. Lord Jim gave 
him a small jab with the knife. Almost at 
once he began to shudder and shake with con¬ 
vulsions, and died on the chapel floor shortly 
after. A deep breath of fascinated horror 
went through the crowd of habitants . The 
Indians nodded and grunted understandingly. 
The secret of Nagushwa was plain to them 
now! Bob noted more than one hand stealth¬ 
ily reaching toward it to snatch it away. 
They were not afraid of it any more. 

‘‘Precisely!” cried His Lordship, looking 
around. “The thief puts his thumb on the 
knob to open it; needle darts up and wounds 
him in the thumb and so kills him—one 
little touch of cobra poison, y’see.” 

“Yes, dat is so,” corroborated the chief, 
“our people come dead, an’ de arm is swollen. 
So we find heem,” 

“Here, Ulysses, you're always keen about 
these mysteries,” said Lord Jim. “Help me, 
this time—I’ll press the knob again, while you 
pry up the cover.” 


2 56 



ST. CESARE 


Again he held the lethal knob aside. Ulys¬ 
ses dug the point of his knife under the cover 
edge. With a small pong! the cover flew up 
and on its under side they saw fastened 
the small but ingenious steel poison mechan¬ 
ism of that ancient French or Florentine 
jeweler. Tightly folded in the base they 
found a yellow packet of old onion-skin 
parchment. 

“Of course!” cried His Lordship, reading 
the ancient French penscript on the parch¬ 
ment. “Deed of the Seignory of the Rocher 
River—and all the country north to the sea— 
to my respected ancestral uncle, Pierre de St. 
Die! Signed by old Roberval himself. See? 
—As might be expected! Witness it, Tro¬ 
jans !” 

Bob did not quite understand the flippant, 
railing sarcasm in His Lordship’s tones as he 
handed over the parchment and they all read 
the ancient French script and the quaint al¬ 
most illegible scrawl which meant the name 
“Roberval.” But the Montaignais chief 
257 



MEDICINE GOLD 


scowled at it, his brow black with passion. 

“No!” he thundered. “Heap lie! Mon- 
taignais own dese lands! Frontenac geev dem 
to de Montaignais. Dere is writin’ say so! 
We Keel! Keel! Keel!” 

He drew back, his hand grasping a knife 
under his blanket, Bob was sure, while his fol¬ 
lowers pressed around him in a compact knot. 
The Trojans and all the whites gathered back 
of His Lordship. They were unarmed, ex¬ 
cept for the hunting knife that each wore, but 
they expected to do no more than defend 
themselves if the Indians attacked. 

“Listen, Chief,” smiled His Lordship 
cheerfully. “Do you think, for one moment, 
that I’d take your forests or sell them to white 
men! They’d lumber them until there was 
no more virgin wilderness left; they’d pulp 
them until nothing but bare rocks remained; 
they’d put in a turbine up in the Grand Serre 
and a power station. My word, they haven’t 
sense enough to leave themselves one single 
spot of wild country for recreation, in their 
258 



ST. CESARE 

beastly greed for money and profits! Don’t 
I know my people! Haven’t I seen it, in 
Pahang, in Burma, in East Africa! Wher¬ 
ever they get hold of the land, no matter how, 
they take it! This old sheet may not be valid, 
in view as you just now said of Fronte- 
nac’s later deed, but I’m going to make it so— 
now! Watch, Chief!” 

He ripped the parchment into pieces be¬ 
fore them, and then, piling the strips on the 
floor, he lit a match and touched it off. 
Flames and a small column of smoke arose, 
and the deed of the Seignory of the Rocher 
was but a pile of ashes which scattered in the 
draughts of the church. 

“There! Go, Chief!—I’ll come hunting 
in your territory again, some day—shan’t I?” 
laughed His Lordship merrily. 

A huge coppery grin broke on the face of 
the Montaignais. “My yoong brother shall 
be welcome—Mooch!—Always!” he replied 
with grave dignity, and then without a word 
he turned and his braves followed him on their 
259 



MEDICINE GOLD 


way back to the forest which was now theirs 
forever. 

“You have done well, my son,” said the 
Cure gently. “It is a providence of Le Bon 
Dieu that brought you, a St. Die, here at this 
time.” He handed him back the Locket of 
St. Die which he had been holding. 

“Is there a jeweler in the village?” asked 
His Lordship. “No? Your blacksmith will 
do as well—have him remove the—ah—ser¬ 
pent’s tooth, from this bauble, and let it be 
given to Antoine. I want you to have it to 
remember us by, my boy,” he smiled at the 
habitant lad. “Shall we be going, Trojans?” 

He led the way out into the village. The 
sun was setting, and by the time their trophies 
and duffel had been brought up to the Cure’s 
house it was dark and the rosy fingers of the 
northern lights were stealing over the sky. 
Save for the occasional lowing of cattle all 
was still. Far off down the valley came the 
distant bell of a locomotive pulling into La 
Tuque. 


260 



ST. CESARE 


“Gad!—I hate to hear that, don’t you, 
boys? Back from beauty and freedom to 
work and turmoil, that bell is calling us! I 
shall leave that fire scorch on Old Plow- 
Handles’ antlers, though, my word! What 
memories! ... No word of that fire to these 
people, though! It would only bring more 
trouble on the Indians.” 

But it was John Charley Nishimi-wog who 
had the last word. Since His Lordship had 
done justice to his own people, the Mon- 
taignais, he had regarded him as a sort of 
demi-god. 

“But you was coom back, some day. Lord 
Jeem,” he said huskily, “and you too, ma 
boys! For genteelmen coureur de hois, you 
was de best dat I ever had in ma can-noe 
—sure ’bout dat!” 

(i) 


THE END 






















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